ETHERS(5) BSD File Formats Manual ETHERS(5)NAMEethers — ethernet address database
DESCRIPTION
The ethers database contains information regarding known 48-bit ethernet
addresses of hosts on an Internetwork. The data is stored in a file
called /etc/ethers in the following format:
ethernet-address fully-qualified-host-name
Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters. A
``#'' at the start of a line indicates the beginning of a comment that
extends to the end of the line. A ``+'' at the start of a line will
cause the ethers(3) library functions to use data stored in the NIS
ethers.byname and ethers.byaddr maps in addition to the data in the
/etc/ethers file.
An ethernet address is expressed in ASCII form as "x:x:x:x:x:x" where x
is a hexadecimal value between 0x00 and 0xFF. The address values should
be in network order. Hostnames specified in the /etc/ethers database
should correspond to entries in the hosts(5) file.
The ether_line() function in the standard C library can be used to break
individual lines in the /etc/ethers database into their individual compo‐
nents: a binary Ethernet address stored as an ether_addr structure, and a
hostname stored as a character string.
FILES
/etc/ethers The ethers file resides in /etc.
SEE ALSOethers(3), yp(8)HISTORY
The ethers format is based on the format used in SunOS 4.1.x.
BSD April 12, 1995 BSD
