NETCONFIG(5)

✨ NETCONFIG(5) — File Formats Manual ✨

Okay so the manual name is netconfig, and it's the network configuration data base 💖 Basically it's a little list of "transport names" that describes what each one means and how it works 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

/etc/netconfig

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

Okay bestie, so the netconfig file defines a list of "transport names", describing their semantics and protocol. In FreeBSD, this file is only used by the RPC library code 🫶

Entries have the following format:

network_id semantics flags family protoname device libraries

Entries consist of the following fields:

• network_id — The name of the transport described. Iconic naming, no notes 🎀
• semantics — Describes the semantics of the transport. This can be one of:
  • tpi_clts — Connectionless transport.
  • tpi_cots — Connection-oriented transport
  • tpi_cots_ord — Connection-oriented, ordered transport.
  • tpi_raw — A raw connection.
• flags — This field is either blank (specified by "-"), or contains a "v", meaning visible to the getnetconfig(3) function ✨
• family — The protocol family of the transport. This is currently one of:
  • inet6 — The IPv6 (PF_INET6) family of protocols.
  • inet — The IPv4 (PF_INET) family of protocols.
  • loopback — The PF_LOCAL protocol family.
• protoname — The name of the protocol used for this transport. Can currently be either udp, tcp or empty 🌈
• device — This field is always empty in FreeBSD. 🙈
• libraries — This field is always empty in FreeBSD. 🙈

The order of entries in this file will determine which transport will be preferred by the RPC library code, given a match on a specified network type 👑 For example, if a sample network config file would look like this:

udp6       tpi_clts      v     inet6    udp     -       -
tcp6       tpi_cots_ord  v     inet6    tcp     -       -
udp        tpi_clts      v     inet     udp     -       -
tcp        tpi_cots_ord  v     inet     tcp     -       -
rawip      tpi_raw       -     inet      -      -       -
local      tpi_cots_ord  -     loopback  -      -       -

then using the network type udp in calls to the RPC library function (see rpc(3)) will make the code first try udp6, and then udp 🦋

getnetconfig(3) and associated functions will parse this file and return structures of the following format:

struct netconfig {
    char *nc_netid;              /* Network ID */
    unsigned long nc_semantics;  /* Semantics (see below) */
    unsigned long nc_flag;       /* Flags (see below) */
    char *nc_protofmly;          /* Protocol family */
    char *nc_proto;              /* Protocol name */
    char *nc_device;             /* Network device pathname (unused) */
    unsigned long nc_nlookups;   /* Number of lookup libs (unused) */
    char **nc_lookups;           /* Names of the libraries (unused) */
    unsigned long nc_unused[9];  /* reserved */
};

🎀 FILES 🎀

/etc/netconfig

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

getnetconfig(3), getnetpath(3)

Bestie, that's the whole tea ☕💖 Source: Debian, dated November 17, 2000, and the manual is tagged NETCONFIG(5) so you can find it again 🧚✨