Updating NetInfo hosts

[Nermal]

I reinstalled Panther recently, and something I've noticed is that there are a lot more ads everywhere now. The reason for that is because before formatting, I had lots of entries in my /etc/hosts file, to stop the ads from appearing (anyone who's done this will know what I'm talking about).

I read that it's 'cleaner' to use NetInfo Manager instead, so I followed the instructions in this article to put the entries in there. However, it seems that the system is ignoring them. Do I somehow need to force OS X to re-read the host information? I've tried going to Management -> Restart Local NetInfo Domains, but that didn't work.

Normally I would just reboot, but I'm trying to get out of the habit* and I'm sure there's a better way. What should I do?

*A 'post your uptime' thread always appears ~20 minutes after I reboot

 

[encro]

Make sure "BSD Flat Files & NIS" is enabled in '/Applications/Utilities/Directory Access'. You might also need to change the lookup order but that might be a 10.2 requirement only.

You can find out all you need regarding host files here on Critical Mass:
http://www.macwrite.com/criticalmass/ mac-os-x-hosts-panther.php

Personally I think going to this extent is overkill, although I have done it in the past on Jaguar and Panther I would just recommend using PithHelmet if your using Safari or if using a Gecko based browser simply adding a customized userContent.css file to your Mozilla/Camino/Firefox installation such as the following: http://texturizer.net/firefox/adblock.html

 

[Nermal]

Problem solved, it saves automatically, my problem was that my lookup order was set to DNS then NetInfo.