dbmmanage(1) dbmmanage(1)
NAME
dbmmanage - Create and update user authentication files in DBM format
SYNOPSIS
dbmmanage filename [ command ] [ username [ encpasswd ] ]
DESCRIPTION
dbmmanage is used to create and update the DBM format files used to store usernames and password for
basic authentication of HTTP users. Resources available from the httpd Apache web server can be
restricted to just the users listed in the files created by dbmmanage. This program can only be used
when the usernames are stored in a DBM file. To use a flat-file database see htpasswd.
This manual page only lists the command line arguments. For details of the directives necessary to
configure user authentication in httpd see the Apache manual, which is part of the Apache distribu-tion distribution
tion or can be found at http://httpd.apache.org/
OPTIONS
filename
The filename of the DBM format file. Usually without the extension .db, .pag, or .dir.
command
This selects the operation to perform:
add Adds an entry for username to filename using the encrypted password encpassword.
adduser Asks for a password and then adds an entry for username to filename .
check Asks for a password and then checks if username is in filename and if it's password
matches the specified one.
delete Deletes the username entry from filename.
import Reads username:password entries (one per line) from STDIN and adds them to filename. The
passwords already has to be crypted.
update Same as the "adduser" command, except that it makes sure username already exists in file-
name.
view Just displays the complete contents of the DBM file.
username The user for which the update operation is performed.
BUGS
One should be aware that there are a number of different DBM file formats in existence, and with all
likelihood, libraries for more than one format may exist on your system. The three primary examples
are NDBM, the GNU project's GDBM, and Berkeley DB 2. Unfortunately, all these libraries use differ-
ent file formats, and you must make sure that the file format used by filename is the same format
that dbmmanage expects to see. dbmmanage currently has no way of determining what type of DBM file
it is looking at. If used against the wrong format, dbmmanage will simply return nothing, or may
create a different DBM file with a different name, or at worst, it may corrupt the DBM file if you
were attempting to write to it.
dbmmanage has a list of DBM format preferences, defined by the @AnyDBM::ISA array near the beginning
of the program. Since we prefer the Berkeley DB 2 file format, the order in which dbmmanage will
look for system libraries is Berkeley DB 2, then NDBM, and then GDBM. The first library found will
be the library dbmmanage will attempt to use for all DBM file transactions. This ordering is
slightly different than the standard @AnyDBM::ISA ordering in perl, as well as the ordering used by
the simple dbmopen() call in Perl, so if you use any other utilities to manage your DBM files, they
must also follow this preference ordering. Similar care must be taken if using programs in other
languages, like C, to access these files.
Apache's mod_auth_db.c module corresponds to Berkeley DB 2 library, while mod_auth_dbm.c corresponds
to the NDBM library. Also, one can usually use the file program supplied with most Unix systems to
see what format a DBM file is in.
SEE ALSO
httpd(8)
February 2004 dbmmanage(1)
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