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 pro-
gram 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 distribution or can be found at
http://httpd.apache.org/.
OPTIONS
filename
The filename of the DBM format file. Usually with-
out 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 user-
name 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 sys-
tem. The three primary examples are 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 cur-
rently 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, 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 pref-
erence ordering. Similar care must be taken if using pro-
grams 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 sup-
plied with most Unix systems to see what format a DBM file
is in.
SEE ALSO
httpd(8)
March 1998 dbmmanage(1)