1netgroup(5) Linux Reference Manual netgroup(5)
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6 netgroup - specify network groups
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9 The netgroup file defines "netgroups", which are sets of (host, user,
10 domain) tuples, used for permission checking when doing remote mounts,
11 remote logins and remote shells.
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13 Each line in the file consists of a netgroup name followed by a by a
14 list of members, where a member is either another netgroup name, or a
15 triple:
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17 (host, user, domain)
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19 where the host, user, and domain are character strings for the corre‐
20 sponding components. Any of the three fields can be empty, in which
21 case it specifies a "wildcard", or may consist of the string "-" to
22 specify "no valid value". The domain field must either be the local
23 domain name or empty for the netgroup entry to be used. This field does
24 not limit the netgroup or provide security. The domain field refers to
25 the domain in which the triple is valid, not the domain containing the
26 the trusted host.
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28 A gateway machine should be listed under all possible hostnames by
29 which it may be recognized:
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31 gateway (server,,) (server-sn,,) (server-bb,,)
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33 The getnetgrent functions should normally be used to access the net‐
34 group database.
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38 /etc/netgroup
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41 getnetgrent(3), exports(5), makedbm(8), ypserv(8)
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44 The triple (,,domain) allows all users and machines trusted access, and
45 has the same effect as the triple (,,). Use the host and user fields of
46 the triple to restrict the access correctly to a specific set of mem‐
47 bers.
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50 The Linux libc5 does not query the /etc/netgroup file directly, it only
51 querys the NIS server for the groups. So the netgroup database must be
52 stored in the form of a hashed dbm database just like the passwd(5) and
53 group(5) databases.
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55 This manpage mentions getnetgrent(3), but it seems that manpage hasn't
56 been written yet. Since getnetgrent() is part of GNU libc it might also
57 be that it is documented in info format.
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60 Thorsten Kukuk <kukuk@suse.de>
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64NIS May 1999 netgroup(5)