DBMMANAGE(1)dbmmanageDBMMANAGE(1)NAMEdbmmanage - Manage user authentication files in DBM format
SYNOPSISdbmmanage [ encoding ] filename
add|adduser|check|delete|update username [ encpasswd [
group[,group...] [ comment ] ] ]
dbmmanage filename view [ username ]
dbmmanage filename import
SUMMARYdbmmanage 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
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/.
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 per-
formed. 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 orig-
inal 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 orig-
inal 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.
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 have to be crypted.
update Same as the adduser command, except that it
makes sure username already exists in file-
name.
view Just displays the contents of the DBM file.
If you specify a username, it displays the
particular record only.
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 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 cur-
rently has no way of determining what type of DBM file it
is looking at. If used against the wrong format, will sim-
ply 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 order-
ing is slightly different than the standard @AnyDBM::ISA
ordering in perl, as well as the ordering used by the sim-
ple dbmopen() call in Perl, so if you use any other utili-
ties 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.
Apache HTTP Server 2003-05-10 DBMMANAGE(1)
