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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>