Add lines to /etc/hosts file

Question

I have RHEL and i wish to run a shell script that will add several lines (over 10 lines) to the /etc/hosts file. I tried to use

sed -i "10.161.61.111 acr111" /etc/hosts 
sed -i "10.161.61.110 acr110" /etc/hosts

and so on, but i get

sed: -e expression #1, char 3: unknown command: `.'

Any idea how to fix this? Or maybe another way to run sh file which will add hosts to the hosts file? Thanks,

Where do the extra data come from? File? Variable? data in the script? — Jotne, Mar 12 '15 at 07:35
@Maya, you can add new entry to /etc/hosts with `sed -i` and `$ a` option, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/50003244/658497 — Noam Manos, Apr 24 '18 at 14:08

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 12 '15 at 05:27

3

Have you read the man page for sed? You're not using the -i parameter correctly.

Instead, why don't you just use:

echo "10.161.61.111 acr111" >> /etc/hosts
echo "10.161.61.110 acr110" >> /etc/hosts

answered Mar 12 '15 at 05:27

Sam

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 12 '15 at 05:39

2

Try this to append (>>) multiple lines to /etc/fstab:

cat << EOF >> /etc/fstab
10.161.61.111 acr111
10.161.61.110 acr110
10.161.61.109 acr109
10.161.61.108 acr108
EOF

answered Mar 12 '15 at 05:39

Cyrus

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 12 '15 at 07:42

2

If data comes from a file do:

cat newdata >> /etc/hosts

If data comes from a variable:

echo "$newdata" >> /etc/host

answered Mar 12 '15 at 07:42

Jotne

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 21 '16 at 09:50

2

You most include -i[SUFFIX], --in-place[=SUFFIX] as follow

sed -i "3i10.161.61.111 acr111" /etc/hosts

ni is the line number where the text will be appen

answered Apr 21 '16 at 09:50

johnnymnmonic

4 Answers4