Hesiod

In computing, the Hesiod name service originated in Project Athena (1983–1991). It uses DNS functionality to provide access to databases of information that change infrequently. In Unix environments it often serves to distribute information kept in the , , and files, among others. Frequently an LDAP server is used to distribute the same kind of information that Hesiod does. However, because Hesiod can leverage existing DNS servers, deploying it to a network is fairly easy. In a Unix-like system users usually have a line in the file for each local user like: foo:x:100:10:Foo Bar:/home/foo:/bin/sh This line is composed of seven colon-separated fields which hold the following data: user login name (string); password hash or "x" if shadow password file is in use (string); user id (unsigned integer); user's primary group id (unsigned integer); Gecos field (four comma separated fields, string); user home directory (string); user login shell (string).