dbmmanage
Manage user authentication files in DBM format
Synopsis
dbmmanage
[ encoding ] filename
add|adduser|check|delete|update username [
encpasswd [ group[,group...] [
comment ] ] ]
dbmmanage
filename view [ username ]
dbmmanage
filename import
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examples
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options
filename
The filename of the DBM format
file. Usually without the extension .db, .pag, or .dir.
username
The user for which the
operations are performed. The username may not
contain a colon (:).
encpasswd
This is the already encrypted
password to use for the update and add commands. You may use
a hyphen (-) if you want to get prompted for the password,
but fill in the fields afterwards. Additionally when using
the update command, a period (.) keeps the original password
untouched.
group
A group, which the user is member of. A groupname may
not contain a colon (:). You may use a hyphen (-) if you
don’t want to assign the user to a group, but fill in
the comment field. Additionally when using the update
command, a period (.) keeps the original groups
untouched.
comment
This is the place for your
opaque comments about the user, like realname, mailaddress
or such things. The server will ignore this field.
Encodings
-d
crypt encryption (default, except on Win32, Netware)
-m
MD5 encryption (default on Win32, Netware)
-s
SHA1 encryption
-p
plaintext (not recommended)
Commands
add
Adds an entry for
username to filename using the encrypted
password encpasswd. dbmmanage passwords.dat add
rbowen foKntnEF3KSXA
adduser
Asks for a password and then
adds an entry for username to filename.
dbmmanage passwords.dat adduser krietz
check
Asks for a password and then checks if username
is in filename and if it’s password matches the
specified one. dbmmanage passwords.dat check rbowen
delete
Deletes the username entry from filename.
dbmmanage passwords.dat delete rbowen
import
Reads username:password entries (one per
line) from STDIN and adds them to filename. The
passwords already have to be crypted.
update
Same as the adduser command, except that it makes sure
username already exists in filename. dbmmanage
passwords.dat update rbowen
view
Just displays the contents of the DBM file. If you
specify a username, it displays the particular record
only. dbmmanage passwords.dat view
summary
dbmmanage is used to create and update the DBM format files used
to store usernames and password for basic authentication of HTTP
users via mod_authn_dbm. Resources available from the Apache HTTP
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 httpd manual, which is part of
the Apache distribution or can be found at
http://httpd.apache.org/.
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 SDBM, NDBM, the GNU project’s GDBM, and
Berkeley DB 2. Unfortunately, all these libraries use
different 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, 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, then
GDBM and then SDBM. 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.
One can usually
use the file program supplied with most Unix systems to see
what format a DBM file is in.