The Getent is a group of utilities that lets you to carry out user/group/service/protocol/host/network lookups or display all obtainable entries in particular areas. All the map services are also recognized (NIS, NIS+, /etc files, anything) since the Getent just calls out the similar library functions that the operating system and applications make use of it. In this way, the system administrator is also able to view what the computer believes about it and also about the entire list of entries is, enabling him for more easily debugging of issues with the nsswitch.conf and others associated with maps and files. The tools also contains getpwent, getgrent, gethostent, getnetent, getservent, getprotoent, and getreuid (for testing the setuid as well as the setgid programs).