1.\" $OpenBSD: ethers.5,v 1.20 2019/08/30 19:34:04 deraadt 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 $Mdocdate: August 30 2019 $ 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 ether_aton 3 27can read and produce this format. 28.Sh FILES 29.Bl -tag -width /etc/ethers -compact 30.It Pa /etc/ethers 31.El 32.Sh SEE ALSO 33.Xr ether_aton 3 , 34.Xr diskless 8 35.Sh HISTORY 36The 37.Nm 38file format was adopted from SunOS and appeared in 39.Nx 400.9b. 41.Sh BUGS 42A name server should be used instead of a static file. 43.Pp 44Lines in 45.Pa /etc/ethers 46are limited to 47.Dv BUFSIZ 48characters 49.Pq currently 1024 . 50Longer lines will be ignored. 51