Getent

<yambe:breadcrumb>System administration tools</yambe:breadcrumb>

getent

On systems that use ldap or other similar mechanims for maintaining /etc/hosts, /etc/passwd, /etc/group etc. files instead of using 'cat /etc/passwd' we should use 'getent passwd to get passwd entries from local file as well as from other sources.

'getent' also supports following other arguments

• ahosts
• ahostsv4
• ahostsv6
• aliases
• ethers
• group
• gshadow
• hosts
• netgroup
• networks
• passwd
• protocols
• rpc
• services
• shadow