remote(5)

remote5

Remote host description file

Overview

The remote file describes remote hosts known by cu(1). It is an ASCII file structured somewhat like the termcap(5) file. Each line in the file provides a description for a single remote host. Fields are separated by a colon (‘:’). Lines ending with a ‘\’ character immediately followed by a newline are continued on the next line.

The first entry is the name(s) of the host system. If there is more than one name for a system, the names are separated by vertical bars (‘|’). After the name of the system comes the fields of the description (the capabilities).

Capabilities are either strings (str), numbers (num), or boolean flags (bool). A string capability is specified by capability=value; for example, ‘dv=/dev/harris’. A numeric capability is specified by capability#value; for example, ‘br#19200’. A boolean capability is specified by simply listing the capability.

br

(num) The baud rate used in establishing a connection to the remote host. This is a decimal number. The default baud rate is 9600 baud.

dc

(bool) This host is directly connected, and cu(1) should not expect carrier detect to be high, nor should it exit if carrier detect drops.

dv

(str) Device to open to establish a connection. If this file refers to a terminal line, cu(1) attempts to perform an exclusive open on the device to ensure only one user at a time has access to the port.

Files

/etc/remote

Global database.

/etc/examples/remote

Example database.

Releases

61 releases since OpenBSD 2.1; the text changed 18 times.

  1. 2.1–2.4
  2. 2.5
  3. 2.6
  4. 2.7
  5. 2.8
  6. 2.9
  7. 3.0–3.3
  8. 3.4
  9. 3.5–3.6
  10. 3.7–3.8
  11. 3.9
  12. 4.0–4.1
  13. 4.2–4.6
  14. 4.7
  15. 4.8–5.7
  16. 5.8–6.1
  17. 6.2
  18. 6.3–6.6
  19. 6.7–8.0

History

The remote file format appeared in 4.2BSD.

From man 8.0-current-20261101 in OpenBSD 8.0-current (2026-11-01). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.