DBMMANAGE(1) BSD Reference Manual DBMMANAGE(1)
dbmmanage - create and update user authentication files in DBM format
dbmmanage filename [command] [username [encpassword]]
dbmmanage is used to create and update the DBM format files used to store
usernames and passwords for basic authentication of HTTP users. Resources
available from the httpd(8) 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(1).
This manual page only lists the command line arguments. For details of
the directives necessary to configure user authentication in httpd(8),
see the Apache manual, which can be found in /var/www/htdocs/manual/.
The options are as follows:
command This selects the operation to perform:
add Add an entry for username to filename using the
encrypted password encpassword.
adduser Ask for a password and then add an entry for
username to filename.
check Ask for a password and then check if username
is in filename and if its password matches the
specified one.
delete Delete the username entry from filename.
import Read username:password entries (one per line)
from stdin and add them to filename. The pass-
word already has to be encrypted.
update Same as the adduser command, except that it
makes sure username already exists in filename.
view Just display the complete contents of the DBM
file.
encpassword The password to be encrypted.
filename The filename of the DBM format file. Usually without the
extension .db, .pag, or .dir.
username The user for which the update operation is performed.
htdigest(1), htpasswd(1), httpd(8)
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, dbmmanage will simply return noth-
ing, 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 stan-
dard "@AnyDBM::ISA" ordering in perl(1), 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.
httpd(8)'s mod_auth_db.c module corresponds to the Berkeley DB 2 library,
while mod_auth_dbm.c corresponds to the NDBM library. Also, one can usu-
ally use the file(1) program supplied with most UNIX systems to see what
format a DBM file is in.
MirBSD #10-current March 19, 2008 1