1.\" $NetBSD: ethers.5,v 1.9 2001/09/11 01:01:57 wiz Exp $ 2.\" 3.\" Written by Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>. Public domain. 4.\" 5.Dd November 7, 2000 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 18.Sq \&# 19character indicates the beginning of a comment; 20characters up to the end of 21the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file. 22.Pp 23Each line in 24.Nm 25has the format: 26.Dl ethernet-MAC-address hostname-or-IP 27.Pp 28Ethernet MAC addresses are expressed as six hexadecimal numbers separated 29by colons, e.g. "08:00:20:00:5a:bc". 30The functions described in 31.Xr ethers 3 32and 33.Xr ether_aton 3 34can read and produce this format. 35.Pp 36The traditional use of 37.Nm 38involved using hostnames for the second argument. 39This may not be suitable for machines that don't have a common MAC 40address for all interfaces (i.e., just about every non 41.Tn Sun 42machine). 43There should be no problem in using an IP address as the second field 44if you wish to differentiate between different interfaces on a system. 45.Sh FILES 46.Bl -tag -width /etc/ethers -compact 47.It Pa /etc/ethers 48The 49.Nm 50file resides in 51.Pa /etc . 52.El 53.Sh SEE ALSO 54.Xr ethers 3 55.Sh HISTORY 56The 57.Nm ethers 58file format was adopted from 59.Tn SunOS 60and appeared in 61.Nx 1.0 . 62.Sh BUGS 63A name server should be used instead of a static file. 64