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>