ethers File for NIS

Purpose

Contains the Ethernet addresses of hosts on the Internet network.

Description

The /etc/ethers file contains information regarding the known (48-bit) Ethernet addresses of hosts on the Internet. The file contains an entry for each host. Each entry consists of the following information:

• Ethernet address
• Official host name

Items are separated by any number of blanks or tab characters. A # (pound sign) indicates the beginning of a comment that extends to the end of the line.

The standard form for Ethernet addresses is x:x:x:x:x:x: where x is a hexadecimal number between 0 and ff, representing one byte. The address bytes are always in network order. Host names may contain any printable character other than a space, tab, new line, or comment character. It is intended that host names in the /etc/ethers file correspond to the host names in the /etc/hosts file.

This file is part of NFS in Network Support Facilities.

Files