Kostis Netzwerkberatung
Konstantinos Kostis
Talstr. 25, D-63322 Rödermark
Tel. +49 6074 881056, FAX 881058
kosta@kostis.net, http://www.kostis.net/

You may use this software free of charge at your own risk

netdb 3.0.6 (2001-01-29)

netdb data file format

Design Goals

• plain text file suitable for plain text editors such as vi
• simple, yet expandable data format
• portable
• default character encoding ISO 8859-1 (8-bit) for values, especially for comments

Definitions

Format Rules

• for each network interface there must be an entry.
• netdb network data files look quite much like Microsoft Windows .ini files but syntax is even more strict.
• each entry begins with the hostname in square brackets - it is the only property not following the syntax for the rest of the properties and values.
• spaces before and/or after a property are not allowed
• spaces before and/or after a value are only allowed only if they are actually part of the value (only for free format values)
• except for hostname properties have no special order
• after each entry there must be an empty line - even after the last entry of a file

General Format of an Entry

[hostname] domain= ipaddr= ipmask= mac= comment= isdnarea= isdnnum= x25= ipxaddr= ipxlan= decnet= location= hubport= user= cnames=

• the name in front of the delimiter (' = ') is called property of the entry for hostname. The text following the delimiter '=' is called the value of a given property.
• a property may or may not have a value with two exceptions which must have a non-empty value: hostname and domain.
• if a property is not assigned a value is assumed to be empty
• properties with empty values should be ommited entirely

Note: The entry shown above is not valid. Do you know why? No? Then read the above lines again until you do. ;)

Example

[live] domain=.usr ipaddr=192.168.0.254 ipmask=255.255.255.0 mac=00-00-1C-D1-D8-AA comment=Red Hat Linux 7.0 (DNS/SMB/DHCP/i4l/netdb/etc.) isdnarea=6074 isdnnum=881057 location=Kostis-Netzwerkberatung hubport=Netgear DS108 Port 1 user=Kosta Kostis cnames=ns dns

This entry would be stored in file /etc/netdb/domains/netdb.usr (since the value of property domain is ".usr" - mind the leading dot).

File Permissions

-rw-rw-r-- 1 netdb apache xxxxx Jan 29 03:06 netdb.virtual-subdomain

As you can see from the example above, machine live does not have any of the following possible properties:

• x25, ipxaddr, ipxlan, decnet

Multiple IP Addresses

Network interfaces with multiple IP addresses need an entry for each IP address hence a hostname for each entry. In such a case please enter it's MAC address only once, otherwise it will cause trouble generating dhcpd.conf files. If you don't need DHCP reservations generated by netdb, go ahead and type in the same MAC address as often as you like. ;)

Unique Properties

The following properties must be unique (when not empty):

• ipaddr
• ipxlan combined with ipxaddr (eg. concatenated like this: %ipxlan%:%ipxaddr% or $ipxlan:$ipxaddr)
• decnet
• x25

Of course hostname must be unique, too. Property domain may not have an empty value.

Virtual Subdomains

For each virtual subdomain (subnet) a corresponding file must exist. If it does not exist, it must be created by shell user netdb using /etc/netdb/bin/netdb.mkdomain.

Example

In this example we create virtual subdomain ".newdomain"

netdb.mkdomain .newdomain,192.168.1.0,255.255.255.0,Nirvana,Nowhere

Delegated Administration

Dividing netdb data into virtual subdomains and hence files allows for delegating administration. Different people can be responsible for different virtual subdomains by allowing them to administer only the virtual subdomains you want them to work on. This combines central storage and delegation which is the best of both worlds.

Administration rights are stored in /etc/netdb/allow.