DESCRIPTION

The netgroup is a SunOS invention. A netgroup database is a list of string triples (hostname, username, domainname) or other netgroup names. Any of the elements in a triple can be empty, which means that anything matches. The functions described here allow access to the netgroup databases. The file /etc/nsswitch.conf defines what database is searched.

The setnetgrent() call defines the netgroup that will be searched by subsequent getnetgrent() calls. The getnetgrent() function retrieves the next netgroup entry, and returns pointers in host, user, domain. A NULL pointer means that the corresponding entry matches any string. The pointers are valid only as long as there is no call to other netgroup-related functions. To avoid this problem you can use the GNU function getnetgrent_r() that stores the strings in the supplied buffer. To free all allocated buffers use endnetgrent().

In most cases you only want to check if the triplet (hostname, username, domainname) is a member of a netgroup. The function innetgr() can be used for this without calling the above three functions. Again, a NULL pointer is a wildcard and matches any string. The function is thread-safe.

RETURN VALUE

These functions return 1 on success and 0 for failure.

FILES

/etc/netgroup

/etc/nsswitch.conf

CONFORMING TO

These functions are not in POSIX.1-2001, but setnetgrent(), endnetgrent(), getnetgrent(), and innetgr() are available on most Unix systems. getnetgrent_r() is not widely available on other systems.

NOTES

In the BSD implementation, setnetgrent() returns void.

SEE ALSO

sethostent(3), setservent(3), setprotoent(3)