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)