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
DESCRIPTION
/etc/ethers contains 48 bit Ethernet addresses and their corresponding
IP numbers, one line for each IP number:
Ethernet-address IP-number
The two items are separated by any number of SPACE and/or TAB
characters. A # at the beginning of a line starts a comment
which ex‐ tends to the end of the line. The Ethernet-address is
written as x:x:x:x:x:x, where x is a hexadecimal number between 0
and ff which represents one byte of the address, which is in
network byte order (big-endian). The IP-number may be a hostname
which can be resolved by DNS or a dot separated number.
EXAMPLES
08:00:20:00:61:CA pal
FILES
/etc/ethers
SEE ALSO
arp(8), rarp(8)
>From the arp man page:
-f filename, --file filename
Similar to the -s option, only this time the address info is
taken from file filename. This can be used if ARP entries for a
lot of hosts have to be set up. The name of the data file is
very often /etc/ethers, but this is not official. If no filename
is specified /etc/ethers is used as default.
--
John Hasler
j...@sugarbit.com
Elmwood, WI USA
