On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 07:08:36PM +0200, Matthias Drochner wrote:
> 
> geert.hendrickx@ua.ac.be said:
> > add static ARP entries, listed in /etc/arp.conf
> 
> I'd prefer a slightly more expensive solution: Have only the IP addresses
> in /etc/arp.conf and look up the IP-ether pairs in /etc/ethers. This
> avoids duplication of information, and it would allow to have the
> /etc/ethers database distributed network- wide, eg. per LDAP. (security
> considerations aside, but there are means to authenticate)
> Something like
> while read ip; do
> 	arp -s $ip `getent ethers $ip`
> done
> 
> Just needs "getent" to handle "ethers".

I concur that this is a good idea.  But I'm not a C coder.  Can anyone hack
/etc/ethers support into getent?  And could all this be checked in before
3.0 is released?  

GH