Configure Parallels Desktop to stop editing /etc/hosts
You don’t mention which domains you are trying to block access to, but you can configure Parallels Desktop to stop fiddling with /etc/hosts, which will hopefully prevent this issue.
According to this Parallels Knowledge Base article, you can prevent Parallels Desktop from updating /etc/hosts as follows:
-
Open the
/Library/Preferences/Parallels/network.desktop.xmlfile and locate the following line:<NATDAllowEtcHostsWrite>1</NATDAllowEtcHostsWrite> -
Set the setting above to “0” (disabled) so that no records will be created in the
/etc/hostsfile.
Use firewall software
Alternatively, if the above method doesn’t work, you can block the domains by using a firewall software like Little Snitch (Little Snitch offers a free trial).
More information
In Parallels Desktop Pro Edition a virtual machine’s name will be automatically registered in the host’s /etc/hosts records if the following statements are true:
- The VM is in Shared or Host-Only network mode;
- and the VM gets an IP address from DHCP (not a static).
For example, say you have a VM named rhel6.3 which is in shared networking mode with the DHCP-assigned IP 10.211.55.4. When you start the VM, a new record will be created in /etc/hosts:
10.211.55.4 rhel6.3 rhel6.3.shared #prl_hostonly shared
Now, by using either the rhel6.3 or rhel6.3.shared name, this VM can be accessed from the host or any other VM in the shared networking group.