64 lines
1.5 KiB
Groff
64 lines
1.5 KiB
Groff
.\" $NetBSD: ethers.5,v 1.9 2001/09/11 01:01:57 wiz Exp $
|
|
.\"
|
|
.\" Written by Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>. Public domain.
|
|
.\"
|
|
.Dd November 7, 2000
|
|
.Dt ETHERS 5
|
|
.Os
|
|
.Sh NAME
|
|
.Nm ethers
|
|
.Nd Ethernet host name data base
|
|
.Sh DESCRIPTION
|
|
The
|
|
.Nm
|
|
file maps Ethernet MAC addresses to host names.
|
|
Lines consist of an address and a host name, separated by any number
|
|
of blanks and/or tab characters.
|
|
A
|
|
.Sq \&#
|
|
character indicates the beginning of a comment;
|
|
characters up to the end of
|
|
the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
Each line in
|
|
.Nm
|
|
has the format:
|
|
.Dl ethernet-MAC-address hostname-or-IP
|
|
.Pp
|
|
Ethernet MAC addresses are expressed as six hexadecimal numbers separated
|
|
by colons, e.g. "08:00:20:00:5a:bc".
|
|
The functions described in
|
|
.Xr ethers 3
|
|
and
|
|
.Xr ether_aton 3
|
|
can read and produce this format.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
The traditional use of
|
|
.Nm
|
|
involved using hostnames for the second argument.
|
|
This may not be suitable for machines that don't have a common MAC
|
|
address for all interfaces (i.e., just about every non
|
|
.Tn Sun
|
|
machine).
|
|
There should be no problem in using an IP address as the second field
|
|
if you wish to differentiate between different interfaces on a system.
|
|
.Sh FILES
|
|
.Bl -tag -width /etc/ethers -compact
|
|
.It Pa /etc/ethers
|
|
The
|
|
.Nm
|
|
file resides in
|
|
.Pa /etc .
|
|
.El
|
|
.Sh SEE ALSO
|
|
.Xr ethers 3
|
|
.Sh HISTORY
|
|
The
|
|
.Nm ethers
|
|
file format was adopted from
|
|
.Tn SunOS
|
|
and appeared in
|
|
.Nx 1.0 .
|
|
.Sh BUGS
|
|
A name server should be used instead of a static file.
|