dbmmanage(1)						      General Commands Manual						      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 distribution or can be found at http://www.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 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 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 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,  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_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)

								    March 1998							      dbmmanage(1)