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I often needs to use a Socks 5 proxy for some websites. I cannot have a system wide proxy applied (which seems to be the method preferred by Chrome), so I have a shortcut which launches a chrome instance with the --proxy-server parameter. It's a command suggested in some StackExchange answers and it contains this part --host-resolver-rules="MAP * 0.0.0.0 , EXCLUDE 127.0.0.1". It has been working flawlessly and it still does. But after a recent update (Currently Version 118 on Linux) chrome has been giving me a warning about that host-resolver-rules part. The warning says You are using an unsupported command-line flag: --host-resolver-rules=MAP * 0.0.0.0 , EXCLUDE 127.0.0.1. Stability and security will suffer.. Despite the warning it still works. So my question is should I remove that part from the command? What does it do? Is it important?

eee
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The part about --host-resolver-rules="MAP * 0.0.0.0 , EXCLUDE 127.0.0.1" means:

Direct all IPv4 domains to be resolved by my local machine except for the IP 127.0.0.1.

The 0.0.0.0 IP address usually stands for the default routing address for IPv4 addresses. The 127.0.0.1 IP address stands for the local host computer and is handled by the loopback mechanism differently than other IP addresses.

You may read more about it in the post What's the difference between 127.0.0.1 and 0.0.0.0?

If you had problem with not all IP references were being directed to your proxy, this parameter of Chrome forced all IPv4 IPs to pass through it.

The warning message of Chrome probably means that the --host-resolver-rules switch has been deprecated by the developers. You may continue to use it as long as it works. It may continue to work forever, or as long as the Chrome developers won't disable it totally.

You may experiment with removing the --host-resolver-rules part from the call, to see if it's really required. Otherwise, you'll need to find a replacement when the time comes (but not immediately).

harrymc
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