xref: /netbsd-src/share/man/man5/ethers.5 (revision ae1bfcddc410612bc8c58b807e1830becb69a24c)
1.\"
2.\"     Written by Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>.  Public domain.
3.\"
4.Dd December 16, 1993
5.Dt ETHERS 5
6.Os NetBSD
7.Sh NAME
8.Nm ethers
9.Nd Ethernet host name data base
10.Sh DESCRIPTION
11The
12.Xr ethers
13file maps Ethernet addresses to host names.
14Lines consist of an address and a host name, separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters.
15A ``#'' indicates the beginning of a comment; characters up to the end of
16the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file.
17.Pp
18Ethernet addresses are expressed as six hexadecimal numbers separated by colons.  The functions described in
19.Xr ethers 3
20and
21.Xr ether_aton 3
22can read and produce this format.
23.Sh FILES
24.Bl -tag -width /etc/ethers -compact
25.It Pa /etc/ethers
26The
27.Nm ethers
28file resides in
29.Pa /etc .
30.El
31.Sh SEE ALSO
32.Xr ethers 3
33.Sh BUGS
34A name server should be used instead of a static file.
35.Sh HISTORY
36The
37.Nm ethers
38file format was adopted from SunOS and appeared in
39NetBSD 0.9b.
40