remove local hosts from terminal on mac

Question

I'm trying to instal adobe cloud, but it doesn't work because I believe some of it's servers are blocked in my terminal.

How do I remove them? I know how to open terminal, but that's it. I'm not the person who put those commands in my terminal, it was someone I used to know that was knowledgeable with coding. Using mac.

Thank you for you help.

Answer 1

If you're not familiar with how to use Terminal or edit the Hosts file in vim, then by far the easiest way to do it is use the GUI editor, Gas Mask* a freeware editor which takes the 'pain' out of the whole process. Just drop it into your Applications folder after download, there's no installation process.
When you launch it, it will ask for your admin password, so it has permission to edit this file for you.

An untouched hosts file will look something like this:-

##
# Host Database
#
# remember to use Gas Mask ;-)
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1   localhost

255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost 
fe80::1%lo0 localhost

At the top are a series of instructions & information, all nicely tucked behind # hash[pound] signs. Any line preceded by a # will be ignored.
Below that are the 'standard' defaults of localhost, broadcast etc. You'll notice that localhost is set to 127.0.0.1 This is known as a loopback address, meaning "route back to myself"… this is what we're going to be looking for.
Leave these first few lines alone, they are necessary.

Below these common entries are custom entries - they will probably all show 127.0.0.1 then a domain, such as www.adobe.com etc. This means any request by your Mac to access adobe.com will not leave your Mac, but be routed instead to "me"… which is really "nowhere".

What you need to do is add a hash # to the beginning of each line you want to deactivate. You can delete the lines, but just in case you ever change your mind, a hash will stop that line from working.

So you change
127.0.0.1 www.adobe.com
into
#127.0.0.1 www.adobe.com
& that line will in future be ignored.

Repeat for anything else related to adobe - there may be a dozen lines or so.

There's a save button at the top of the Gas Mask window. Save & just to be sure, reboot your Mac.

That should be it. Done.

*^{Link directly to the current version download page, as GitHub isn't easy to navigate if you're not familiar with it - you'd probably end up with a version to compile yourself, which is really not for beginners.}