NETGROUP(5) | File Formats Manual | NETGROUP(5)

# NAME

`netgroup` — defines network groups

# SYNOPSIS

`netgroup` |

# DESCRIPTION

The `netgroup` file specifies “netgroups”, which are sets of (host, user, domain) tuples that are to be given similar network access.

Each line in the file consists of a netgroup name followed by a list of the members of the netgroup. Each member can be either the name of another netgroup or a specification of a tuple as follows:

    (host, user, domain)

where the host, user, and domain are character string names for the corresponding component. Any of the comma separated fields may be empty to specify a “wildcard” value or may consist of the string “`-`” to specify “no valid value”. The members of the list may be separated by whitespace; the “\” character may be used at the end of a line to specify line continuation. The functions specified in getnetgrent(3) should normally be used to access the `netgroup` database.

If ‘files’ is specified for the ‘netgroup’ database in nsswitch.conf(5), (or no ‘netgroup’ entry is specified), then these functions operate on the db(3) version of the `netgroup` `(netgroup.db)` file which can be generated using netgroup_mkdb(8). If ‘nis’ is specified then the NIS maps ‘netgroup’, ‘netgroup.byhost’, and ‘netgroup.byuser’ are used.

Lines that begin with a # are treated as comments.

# FILES

/etc/netgroup.db
  the netgroup database.

# COMPATIBILITY

The file format is compatible with that of various vendors, however it appears that not all vendors use an identical format.

# SEE ALSO

getnetgrent(3), exports(5), nsswitch.conf(5), netgroup_mkdb(8)

# BUGS

The interpretation of access restrictions based on the member tuples of a netgroup is left up to the various network applications.

January 16, 1999 | NetBSD 11.0