netgroup(4) [osf1 man page]
netgroup(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual netgroup(4) NAME
netgroup - List of network groups DESCRIPTION
The netgroup file defines network-wide groups used for permission checking when doing remote mounts, remote logins, and remote shells. For remote mounts, the information in the netgroup file is used to classify machines; for remote logins and remote shells, it is used to clas- sify users. Each line of the netgroup file defines a group and has the following format: groupname member_1 ... member_n Each member can be either another group name or a combination of the host name, user name, and domain name in the following format: (hostname, username, domainname) Any of the three fields can be empty, in which case a wildcard is assumed. For example, to define a group to which everyone belongs, the following entry could appear in the netgroup file: universal (,,) Field names that begin with something other than a letter, digit, or underscore (such as ``-'') work in the opposite way. For example: justmachines (analytica,-,suez) justpeople (-,babbage,suez) The machine analytica belongs to the group justmachines in the domain suez, but no users belong to it. Similarly, the user babbage belongs to the group justpeople in the domain suez, but no machines belong to it. Network groups are part of the NIS database and are accessed through these files: /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.dir /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.pag /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.byuser.dir /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.byuser.pag /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.byhost.dir /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.byhost.pag These files can be created from /etc/netgroup using makedbm(8). FILES
/etc/netgroup /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.dir /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.pag /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.byuser.dir /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.byuser.pag /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.byhost.dir /etc/yp/domainname/netgroup.byhost.pag RELATED INFORMATION
getnetgrent(3), makedbm(8), ypserv(8) delim off netgroup(4)
Check Out this Related Man Page
netgroup(5) Linux Reference Manual netgroup(5) NAME
netgroup - specify network groups DESCRIPTION
The netgroup file defines "netgroups", which are sets of (host, user, domain) tuples, used for permission checking when doing remote mounts, remote logins and remote shells. Each line in the file consists of a netgroup name followed by a by a list of members, where a member is either another netgroup name, or a triple: (host, user, domain) where the host, user, and domain are character strings for the corresponding components. Any of the three fields can be empty, in which case it specifies a "wildcard", or may consist of the string "-" to specify "no valid value". The domain field must either be the local domain name or empty for the netgroup entry to be used. This field does not limit the netgroup or provide security. The domain field refers to the domain in which the triple is valid, not the domain containing the the trusted host. A gateway machine should be listed under all possible hostnames by which it may be recognized: gateway (server,,) (server-sn,,) (server-bb,,) The getnetgrent functions should normally be used to access the netgroup database. FILES
/etc/netgroup SEE ALSO
getnetgrent(3), exports(5), makedbm(8), ypserv(8) WARNINGS
The triple (,,domain) allows all users and machines trusted access, and has the same effect as the triple (,,). Use the host and user fields of the triple to restrict the access correctly to a specific set of members. BUGS
The Linux libc5 does not query the /etc/netgroup file directly, it only querys the NIS server for the groups. So the netgroup database must be stored in the form of a hashed dbm database just like the passwd(5) and group(5) databases. This manpage mentions getnetgrent(3), but it seems that manpage hasn't been written yet. Since getnetgrent() is part of GNU libc it might also be that it is documented in info format. AUTHOR
Thorsten Kukuk <kukuk@suse.de> NIS
May 1999 netgroup(5)