Can I temporarily disable my hostfile ?

[cogset]

I suppose this can't be actually done,however what I actually wanted to ask is whether I can temporarily disable all the entries added to my hostfile,in case I need to check if a specific website doesn't open exactly because of some line added to that hostfile.

It has happened to me before,and going through the list manually commenting the lines that *could* prevent some website from loading is definitely annoying:I take a quick switch like sudo ufw disable/enable doesn't exist for the hostfile,right ?

[CharlesA]

No. You would have to comment all the lines out - or just create a new hosts file with just the default entries.

[Hungry Man]

Rename it temporarily. You could do

mv /etc/hosts /etc/hostess

and to undo

mv /etc/hostess /etc/hosts

[HermanAB]

Rename it, as described, but also be sure to make a new one with the default entries for localhost.

[cogset]

Yes,I should have thought about that...thanks.