1.\" $OpenBSD: ethers.5,v 1.13 2001/03/06 19:56:52 brad Exp $ 2.\" $NetBSD: ethers.5,v 1.2 1994/11/30 19:31:16 jtc Exp $ 3.\" 4.\" Written by Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>. Public domain. 5.\" 6.Dd December 16, 1993 7.Dt ETHERS 5 8.Os 9.Sh NAME 10.Nm ethers 11.Nd Ethernet host name database 12.Sh DESCRIPTION 13The 14.Nm 15file maps Ethernet addresses to host names. 16Lines consist of an address and a host name, separated by any number 17of blanks and/or tab characters. 18A 19.Ql # 20indicates the beginning of a comment; characters up to the end of 21the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file. 22.Pp 23Ethernet addresses are expressed as six hexadecimal numbers separated by 24colons. 25The functions described in 26.Xr ethers 3 27can read and produce this format. 28.Pp 29The 30.Nm 31file has support for YP functionality. 32.Sh FILES 33.Bl -tag -width /etc/ethers -compact 34.It Pa /etc/ethers 35.El 36.Sh SEE ALSO 37.Xr ethers 3 , 38.Xr diskless 8 39.Sh BUGS 40A name server should be used instead of a static file. 41.Pp 42Lines in 43.Pa /etc/ethers 44are limited to 45.Dv BUFSIZE 46characters (currently 1024). 47Longer lines will be ignored. 48.Sh HISTORY 49The 50.Nm 51file format was adopted from SunOS and appeared in 52.Nx 530.9b. 54