ETHERS(5)                 OpenBSD Programmer's Manual                ETHERS(5)

NAME
     ethers - Ethernet host name database

DESCRIPTION
     The ethers file maps Ethernet addresses to host names.  Lines consist of
     an address and a host name, separated by any number of blanks and/or tab
     characters.  A `#' indicates the beginning of a comment; characters up to
     the end of the line are not interpreted by routines which search the
     file.

     Ethernet addresses are expressed as six hexadecimal numbers separated by
     colons.  The functions described in ethers(3) can read and produce this
     format.

     The ethers file has support for YP functionality.

FILES
     /etc/ethers

SEE ALSO
     ethers(3), diskless(8)

BUGS
     A name server should be used instead of a static file.

     Lines in /etc/ethers are limited to BUFSIZE characters (currently 1024).
     Longer lines will be ignored.

HISTORY
     The ethers file format was adopted from SunOS and appeared in NetBSD
     0.9b.

OpenBSD 2.9                    December 16, 1993                             1
