xref: /netbsd-src/share/man/man5/ethers.5 (revision 4472dbe5e3bd91ef2540bada7a7ca7384627ff9b)
1.\"	$NetBSD: ethers.5,v 1.5 1999/03/17 20:19:45 garbled Exp $
2.\"
3.\"     Written by Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>.  Public domain.
4.\"
5.Dd December 16, 1993
6.Dt ETHERS 5
7.Os
8.Sh NAME
9.Nm ethers
10.Nd Ethernet host name data base
11.Sh DESCRIPTION
12The
13.Nm
14file maps Ethernet MAC addresses to host names.
15Lines consist of an address and a host name, separated by any number
16of blanks and/or tab characters.
17A ``#'' character indicates the beginning of a comment;
18characters up to the end of
19the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file.
20.Pp
21Ethernet MAC addresses are expressed as six hexadecimal numbers separated
22by colons, e.g. "08:00:20:00:5a:bc".
23The functions described in
24.Xr ethers 3
25and
26.Xr ether_aton 3
27can read and produce this format.
28.Sh FILES
29.Bl -tag -width /etc/ethers -compact
30.It Pa /etc/ethers
31The
32.Nm
33file resides in
34.Pa /etc .
35.El
36.Sh SEE ALSO
37.Xr ethers 3
38.Sh BUGS
39A name server should be used instead of a static file.
40.Sh HISTORY
41The
42.Nm ethers
43file format was adopted from
44.Tn SunOS
45and appeared in
46.Nx 1.0 .
47