Hosts File Export

RackPeek can generate a ready-to-use /etc/hosts file from your infrastructure model.

This is useful when you:

• Don’t run internal DNS
• Want simple local name resolution
• Are working in an air-gapped lab
• Need consistent host mappings across machines

RackPeek stays the source of truth. Your hosts file just reflects it.

1. Make a Resource Eligible

A resource is included if it has an address.

Define at least one:

labels:
  ip: 192.168.1.20

or

labels:
  hostname: server01.local

(If you already use Ansible, ansible_host also works.)

If no address is present, the resource is skipped.

2. Example Resource

- kind: System
  name: vm-web01
  tags:
    - prod
  labels:
    ip: 192.168.1.20

3. Generated Output

RackPeek produces standard hosts entries:

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost

192.168.1.20 vm-web01
192.168.1.30 vm-db01

With a domain suffix:

--domain-suffix home.local

You’ll get:

192.168.1.20 vm-web01.home.local

4. CLI Example

rpk export hosts \
  --include-tags prod \
  --domain-suffix home.local \
  --output hosts.txt

5. Apply It

On macOS or Linux:

sudo cp hosts.txt /etc/hosts

Now you can:

ping vm-web01

No DNS required.