netgroup(4)                                           netgroup(4)



NAME
     netgroup - list of network groups

DESCRIPTION
     netgroup defines network-wide groups,  which  are  used  for
     permission checking when you are doing remote mounts, remote
     logins,  or  starting  remote  shells.   Each  line  of  the
     netgroup file defines a group and has the format

        groupname member1 member2...

     where member1 is either another group name or  a  triple  of
     the form

          (hostname, username, domainname)

     Any of three fields can be empty; an empty field signifies a
     wildcard.  Thus

        universal (,,)

     defines a group to which everyone belongs.

     Network groups are accessed through the Network  Information
     Service   (NIS,  formerly  called  ``Yellow  Pages'').   The
     database actually used by NIS is in the two files:

          /etc/yp/domainname/netg.dir
          /etc/yp/domainname/netg.pag

     You  create  these  files  from  /etc/netgroup  by   running
     makedbm.

EXAMPLES
     This entry in the /etc/netgroup file defines a group  called
     sales  whose members are any users who log in to the systems
     named h2 and h3 in the domain named geyser:

        sales   (h2,,geyser)     (h3,,geyser)

     If the value of a  field  in  parentheses  begins  with  any
     character  other  than  a  letter, a digit, or an underscore
     (_), the host, user, or domain specified by  that  value  is
     excluded  from  the  group.   By convention, a hyphen (-) is
     used. Here is an example that includes any user logged in to
     h2  and  h3  in the domains carrot and orange, respectively,
     but excludes the user fred from the marketing group when  he
     is logged in to h3 in the domain apple:

        marketing  (h2,,carrot)  (h3,,orange)  (h3,-fred,apple)

     You can use groups to form another group. This example forms



January 1992                                                    1

netgroup(4)                                           netgroup(4)



     the group engineering from the groups hardware and software:

        engineering       hardware  software
        hardware          (h1,alan,)(h2,beth,)(-h3,,)
        software          (h4,chris,)(h5,deborah,)(,fred,)

     The members of the hardware group are alan  and  beth,  when
     they are logged in to h1 and h2, respectively. Anyone who is
     logged in on h3 is specifically  denied  membership  in  the
     hardware group.

     The members of the software group are chris and deborah, who
     must  log  in to h4 and h5, respectively. The user fred is a
     member of the software group regardless of which  system  he
     logs in to.

     The members of the engineering group are alan, beth,  chris,
     deborah, and fred.

FILES
     /etc/netgroup
          File containing list of network groups
     /etc/yp/domainname/netg.dir
          File containing database information
     /etc/yp/domainname/netp.pag
          File containing database information

SEE ALSO
     getnetgrent(3), exports(4)

     makedbm(1M), ypserv(1M) in A/UX System Administrator's
     Reference























2                                                    January 1992