web browsers are not picking up my web server via the hosts file, but they pick up my web server on 127.0.0.1

Question

I run a web server e.g. python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80 or python -m http.server 80(which of those depends on python version), and I do echo blah >index.html to write an index.html with the text blah in it.

C:\Python27>start python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80


Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 80 ...

and it works

C:\Python27>curl 127.0.0.1
blah

C:\Python27>

Chrome picks it up

http://127.0.0.1 displays blah

My hosts file c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

has these lines

127.0.0.1 rice.com
127.0.0.1 www.rice.com

And the hosts file works, for rice.com

in that if I tell chrome to go to http://rice.com, then it says "This site can’t be reached rice.com refused to connect."

But it's not picking up the web server when going through the hosts file!

So I can access http://127.0.0.1 in chrome and that works

but when I do http://rice.com it doesn't go to rice.com so the hosts file is doing something, or rather, it's having some effect.

but chrome doesn't get from http://rice.com to http://127.0.0.1

firefox also.

That was windows 7. I tried it on another laptop that happens to be running windows 10, and same thing happens.

I start the web server python -m http.server 80

And same thing.. If I do http://127.0.0.1 it sees it(contents of index.html). If I do http://rice.com then it says "site can't be reached. refused to connect".

Answer 1

If in chrome://settings/security the option "Use secure DNS" is enabled, try to disable it and restart Chrome.

"Secure DNS" stands for "DNS over HTTPS" and is now enabled by default. It causes the browser to ignore all local DNS settings and do its own DNS lookups using a provider configured in the browser (by default probably Google) over a secure HTTPS channel.

This will prevent eavesdroppers or your ISP from tracking what sites you visit by monitoring your DNS lookups, but it will also disable your hosts file.