hosts: bad address at /etc/hosts line 5

Noticing this in my error.log:

Jun 3 15:19:44 ubuntu dnsmasq[28680]: bad address at /etc/hosts line 5

>lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Release:        16.04
Codename:       xenial

Here’s the first few lines of /etc/hosts:

# This hosts file is a merged collection of hosts from reputable sources,
# with a dash of crowd sourcing via Github
#
# Date: June 03 2017
# Number of unique domains: 36,247
#
# Fetch the latest version of this file: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
# Project home page: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
#
# ===============================================================

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain
127.0.0.1 local
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0
127.0.1.1 ubuntu
127.0.0.53 ubuntu

# Custom host records are listed here.

I update my hosts file via cron:

0 0 * * * root /usr/bin/python /opt/hostupdate/updateHostsFile.py -a -r -f 2>&1 | /usr/bin/logger -t UpdateHosts

Not sure what else I could provide. Could just be my system, or something more common? Doesn’t seem to have any issues though.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 7 years ago
Comments: 16 (9 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@dnmTX now that you’ve said it like that, i get it. maybe it was only me, but you could have phrased those sentences more clearly.

I assume that it’s specifically connected to MacOS

which one? the error, the line for ipv6 link-local? i thought you’re talking about the error, hence my response.

Probably the best thing is (the line fe80::1%lo0 localhost) to be commented(by default.) with some note for Mac users(.)

I’m not picking up on your post just trying to clarify what was my line of thought. and thanks btw, for now I’ll just comment out that line.

aasril on Apr 10, 2019

Since I saw that you were responding to this issue I’ve been motivated to find some more info and fixes I could.

The first thing I do was to make sure that I didn’t disable ipv6 intentionally or unintentionally in the past. After following three different tutorials which check three different files, I can say that ipv6 is not disable on this machine.

The first possible fix I tried is to add my interface to /etc/network/interfaces with added inet6 on the line. It didn’t work. The second thing I did was to disable dns-over-https proxy that I’m using since in one of my search this was mentioned, but also didn’t get rid of the error. The third thing I did was to install wide-dhcpv6-client. After it was installed I added a recommended config, then I also applied a patch for script the application used since it was mentioned that the default script was buggy. This also has no effect on the error.

I should mention that I rebooted the machine after each of try, just in case.

Since this error message seems doesn’t have any negative effects on my day-to-day use, I didn’t even notice this for more than a couple of years I have this machine. So there it is how far my motivation to the bottom of the problem go 😀 I don’t have any knowledge to go deeper, though if anyone has some suggestions I’ll be happy to try.

And @StevenBlack, thanks for your hard work maintaining this ever growing lists.

aasril on Apr 9, 2019