freebsd-skq/share/man/man5/hosts.5
Warner Losh c22076b528 man: Remove obsolete info from hosts man page
The NIC no longer provides a host database, and hasn't for quite some
time. Remove that paragraph, it's not been relevant for many years. Also, hosts
appeared in 4.1c, not 4.2, so correct that too.

Noticed by: Henry Bent
2021-03-11 11:46:10 -07:00

96 lines
3.1 KiB
Groff

.\" Copyright (c) 1983, 1991, 1993
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.\" @(#)hosts.5 8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd December 25, 2013
.Dt HOSTS 5
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm hosts
.Nd host name data base
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
file contains information regarding
the known hosts on the network.
It can be used in conjunction with DNS, and the NIS
maps `hosts.byaddr' and `hosts.byname', as controlled by
.Xr nsswitch.conf 5 .
For each host a single line should be present
with the following information:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
Internet address
official host name
aliases
.Ed
.Pp
Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or
tab characters.
A ``#'' indicates the beginning of
a comment; characters up to the end of the line are
not interpreted by routines which search the file.
.Pp
This file provides a backup used when the name server
is not running.
For the name server, it is suggested that only a few addresses
be included in this file.
These include addresses for the local interfaces that
.Xr ifconfig 8
needs at boot time and a few machines on the local network.
.Pp
Network addresses are specified in the conventional
``.'' (dot) notation using the
.Xr inet_addr 3
routine
from the Internet address manipulation library,
.Xr inet 3 .
Host names may contain any printable
character other than a field delimiter, newline,
or comment character.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /etc/hosts -compact
.It Pa /etc/hosts
The
.Nm
file resides in
.Pa /etc .
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr gethostbyname 3 ,
.Xr nsswitch.conf 5 ,
.Xr ifconfig 8
.Rs
.%T "Name Server Operations Guide for BIND"
.Re
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
file format appeared in
.Bx 4.1c .