Configure hosts File in Android

Alright, today I would like to work a sample web site and browse it not only from my Android Emulator but also from my Android G1 device. Since I did not make the web site public yet, I need to play with "hosts" file in order to direct specific url to my specific intranet IP on Android browser.

The steps that I follow to accomplish my goal are provided below;

For Android Emulator;
1. From the terminal invoke the adb command with remount option otherwise you will get "failed to copy 'hosts' to '/system/etc/hosts': Read-only file system".

adb remount

2. In the terminal pull the default hosts file from /system/etc/hosts or /etc/hosts which is the symlink of the file not only for backup purpose but also to get the file to modify.

adb pull /system/etc/hosts /home/player/hostBackup/

3. Get a copy of the the hosts file in your computer and modify it according to your needs.

4. Now we can push the file directly to the emulator.

adb push /home/player/hostBackup/hosts /system/etc/

5. That's it, if you wish you can check it out from you shell.

adb -e shell
# cat /system/etc/hosts

For Android G1 physical device;
1. In the device scenario, you need to start root accessed adb.

adb root

2. After gaining the root access successfully, just follow the steps 1-5 in for emulator section.

This procedure is working on both Windows and Linux with Android SDK 1.5_r2, just change the file paths for Windows version and it's all done.

Happy coding...