Hosts Setup Utility

Introduction

Since the governments of some countries are using technical methods blocking internet access to some websites and web service providers which includes some world famous sites like Google, YouTube, twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia etc., we designed this tiny utility in order to help people getting through the Internet blockade.

Hosts Setup Utility provides basic tools to manage the hosts file on current operating systems. It also provides both support for Graphical Desktop environment with Graphical User Interface (GUI) and CLI environment with Text-based User Interface (TUI).

Users could use these tool to modify the hosts to visit specified websites or services blocked by ISP/government. Functions which help users to backup/restore hosts files are also provided.

Hosts Setup Utility is designed by huhamhire-hosts team. For further information, please visit our website.

Developer Documentation

Developers could find our project documentation by visiting https://hosts.huhamhire.com/document/.

This documentation contains descriptions of modules and functions which are used in the current version of Hosts Setup Utility. These documents also provides some optional methods for developers to help improve this tool.

License

Licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

System Requirements

Here are the system requirements needed for using Hosts Setup Utility.

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

System requirements to run Hosts Setup Utility on Graphical Desktop are listed here:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer for Windows users.

• Mac OS X 10.6 or newer for Macintosh users.

• Linux/X11 desktop with Python 2 and PyQt4 for Linux/X11 users.

• Internet access is required for retrieving the latest hosts data file.

  • On some linux distributions, pre-built packages of PyQt4 can be found in software repositories. For example, you can install PyQt4 on a debian distribution simplly using:

    apt-get install python-qt4

More requirements are needed for developers:

• Python 2.6/2.7 with PyQt4 extension for developers.
• py2exe or py2app would be required while making binary excutables for specified platforms.

Text-based User Interface (TUI)

Any devices with Python 2 and Python Standard Library INSTALLED could run Hosts Setup Utility in TUI mode from a 80x24 terminal. In addition to this, TUI mode could also be operated via SSH on remote devices/machines/servers. All you need is a system with Python 2 installed.

Get Started

Since Hosts Setup Utility supports both Graphical Desktop environment with Graphical User Interface (GUI) and CLI/terminal environment with Text-based User Interface (TUI), users could the way they would like to launch this tool.

However, GUI mode is highly recommended because several features like backup/restore hosts file are still not supported in TUI mode currently.

• If the program is not running with privileges to modify the hosts file, a warning message would be shown and you could only do operations like backup hosts file and update the local data file. Plus, TUI mode could not get started in this condition.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) Mode

• Windows(x86/x64): Run hoststool.exe from the binary excutables package to get started.

  • "Run as Administrator" is needed for operations to change the hosts file on Windows Vista or newer.

• Mac OS X: Run HostsUtl application from the binary excutables package to get started.

  • Because of the locale problem with py2app, the automatic language selection may not work correctly on Mac OS with binary executable files. You can just choose the language on your on choice.

• Linux/X11(Source code): Run command "python hoststool.py" to get started.

  • All platforms with Python and the PyQt4 could use this method to run with the source code.
  • A desktop environment with PyQt4 and python is needed only for Linux/X11 users to start a GUI Session.

Text-based User Interface (TUI) Mode

• Windows Excutable(x86/x64):

  1. Start a command line(could be cmd or Power Shell).
     • "Run as Administrator" is needed for operations to change the hosts file on Windows Vista or newer.
  2. Change directory to the folder contains binary executable files. of Hosts Setup Utility.
  3. Run hoststool_tui.exe with an argument -t from the directory to get started.

• Python Source Code:

  Python Source Code is very easy to be started through any terminals on any operating systems.

  1. Change your directory to the source script.
  2. Run python hoststool.py -t in the terminal. Of course, wirte privileges to access the hosts file on current system is required. If not, a warning message box would show up and then terminate current session.

User Customized Hosts

Users are allowed to add customized hosts list as an independent module to make a hosts file. All you need to do is create a simple text file named custom.hosts in the working directory, and put your own hosts entries into this file. Then you would find a Customized Hosts option in the function list.

• Non-ASCII characters are not recommended to be put into the customized hosts file.

Author/Maintainer

huhamhire mailto:me@huhamhire.com