SERVICES(5)               FreeBSD File Formats Manual              SERVICES(5)

NAME
     services - service name data base

DESCRIPTION
     The services file contains information regarding the known services
     available in the Internet.  For each service a single line should be
     present with the following information:

           official service name
           port number
           protocol name
           aliases

     Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters.  The
     port number and protocol name are considered a single item; a ``/'' is
     used to separate the port and protocol (e.g. ``512/tcp'').  A ``#''
     indicates the beginning of a comment; subsequent characters up to the end
     of the line are not interpreted by the routines which search the file.

     Service names may contain any printable character other than a field
     delimiter, newline, or comment character.

     If "db" is specified as source in the nsswitch.conf(5),
     /var/db/services.db is searched.  The database in /var/db/services.db
     needs to be updated with services_mkdb(8) after changes to the services
     file have been applied.

NIS INTERACTION
     Access to the NIS services.byname map can be enabled by adding a single
     ``+'' on a line by itself in the /etc/services file.  This causes the
     contents of the NIS services map to be inserted at the location where the
     ``+'' appears.

FILES
     /etc/services  The services file resides in /etc.

SEE ALSO
     getservent(3), nsswitch.conf(5), services_mkdb(8)

HISTORY
     The services file format appeared in 4.2BSD.

BUGS
     A name server should be used instead of a static file.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6          April 4, 2010         FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6