oam/knowledge base/netrc.md

The .netrc file

Specifies automatic login information for the ftp and rexec commands.

It is located under a user's home directory (~/.netrc) and must be owned either by the user executing the command or by the root user. If the .netrc file contains a login password, the file's permissions must be set to 600 (read and write by its owner only).

Table of contents

1. Format
2. Further readings

Format

The file can contain the following entries separated by spaces, tabs, or new lines:

• machine hostname: this begins the definition of the automatic login process for the specified hostname; all the following entries, up to a new machine entry or the end of the file, will apply to hostname
• default: like machine, but matches any hostname; there can be only 1 in the whole file and it is considered the last entry (entries following it will be ignored)
• login username: the full domain user name used for authentication; if found the automatic login process initiates a login with the specified username, else it will fail
• password password: the password to use for authentication; it must be set at the remote host and must be present in .netrc, otherwise the process will fail and the user is prompted for a new value

  passwords in this fields cannot contain spaces

The two formats below are equivalent:

machine example.com login daniel password qwerty
machine host1.austin.century.com login fred password bluebonnet

machine example.com
login daniel
password qwerty
machine host1.austin.century.com
login fred
password bluebonnet

Further readings

• netrc