freebsd man page for services

SERVICES(5)						      BSD File Formats Manual						       SERVICES(5)

NAME
     services -- service name data base

DESCRIPTION
     The services file contains information regarding the known services available in the Internet.  For each service a single line should be
     present with the following information:

	   official service name
	   port number
	   protocol name
	   aliases

     Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters.  The port number and protocol name are considered a single item; a ``/''
     is used to separate the port and protocol (e.g. ``512/tcp'').  A ``#'' indicates the beginning of a comment; subsequent characters up to the
     end of the line are not interpreted by the routines which search the file.

     Service names may contain any printable character other than a field delimiter, newline, or comment character.

     If ``db'' is specified as source in the nsswitch.conf(5), /var/db/services.db is searched.  The database in /var/db/services.db needs to be
     updated with services_mkdb(8) after changes to the services file have been applied.

NIS INTERACTION
     Access to the NIS services.byname map can be enabled by adding a single ``+'' on a line by itself in the /etc/services file.  This causes the
     contents of the NIS services map to be inserted at the location where the ``+'' appears.

FILES
     /etc/services  The services file resides in /etc.

SEE ALSO
     getservent(3), nsswitch.conf(5), services_mkdb(8)

HISTORY
     The services file format appeared in 4.2BSD.

BUGS
     A name server should be used instead of a static file.

BSD
								   April 4, 2010							       BSD