Updated: 2022/Sep/29

Please read Privacy Policy. It's for your privacy.

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.

NetBSD 10.99                   January 16, 1999                   NetBSD 10.99