dbmmanage(1)dbmmanage(1)NAMEdbmmanage - Create and update user authentication files in DBM format
SYNOPSISdbmmanage filename [ command ] [ username [ encpasswd ] ]
DESCRIPTIONdbmmanage 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 without the exten‐
sion .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 file‐
name 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 filename.
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 for‐
mats in existance, 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 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 @Any‐
DBM::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 ALSOhttpd(8)
March 1998 dbmmanage(1)