Which tools read /etc/ethers, what do they expect in there, what do
they do with the contents?
Is it only used to show names to a user or
take names from a user instead of MAC addresses, like in tcpdump?
The Linux man page says the entries in /etc/ethers should be numeric
IP addresses or names which can be resolved by DNS,
On Wed, Jan 3, 2024, 8:23 PM John Hasler <john@sugarbit.com> wrote:
The man page for /etc/ethers (a file) is in net-tools. The file does
not exist on my Sid system.
The man page:
NAME
ethers - Ethernet address to IP number database
....
Isn't that file a somehow surviving BSD-ism?
From the arp man page:
On Wed, Jan 3, 2024, 8:23 PM John Hasler <john@sugarbit.com> wrote:
The man page for /etc/ethers (a file) is in net-tools. The file does....
not exist on my Sid system.
The man page:
NAME
ethers - Ethernet address to IP number database
Isn't that file a somehow surviving BSD-ism?
Which tools read /etc/ethers, what do they expect in there, what do
they do with the contents?
Which tools read /etc/ethers, what do they expect in there, what do
they do with the contents? Is it only used to show names to a user or
take names from a user instead of MAC addresses, like in tcpdump?
The Linux man page says the entries in /etc/ethers should be numeric
IP addresses or names which can be resolved by DNS, while the FreeBSD
man page says there should be fully qualified names in /etc/ethers
which should also be in /etc/hosts.
But does really some tool get a MAC address from somewhere, converts
it to a name using /etc/ethers, and then expects to resolve that name
into an IP address?
I would like to put names of hosts or interfaces in there, which don't necessarily have an IP address or no entry in /etc/hosts or DNS, like switches, access points or routers with multiple interfaces,
interfaces of a Linux bridge, etc.
And may the entry in /etc/ethers contain a '.' to separate a name and
an interface number or VLAN ID, like host.0 and host.1 for the LAN and
WLAN interface?
Steve
Which tools read /etc/ethers, what do they expect in there, what do
they do with the contents?
AFAIK it's mostly unused nowadays. I have such a file on my DHCP
server, where `dnsmasq` reads it (lets me give static IP addresses to
some of my machines, even though they're configured via DHCP,
i.e. they're "dynamically static").
Stefan
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