makedbm linux command

makedbm

makedbm [options] infile outfile

NFS/NIS command. Make NIS dbm file. makedbm takes infile and converts it to a pair of files in ndbm format, namely outfile.pag and outfile.dir. Each line of the input file is converted to a single dbm record. All characters up to the first TAB or SPACE form the key, and the rest of the line is the data. If line ends with &, the data for that record is continued on to the next line. It is left for the NIS clients to interpret #; makedbm does not treat it as a comment character. infile can be -, in which case the standard input is read.

makedbm generates a special entry with the key yp_last_modified, which is the date of infile (or the current time, if infile is -).

Options

-b

Interdomain. Propagate a map to all servers using the interdomain name server named.

-d yp_domain_name

Create a special entry with the key yp_domain_name.

-i yp_input_file

Create a special entry with the key yp_input_file.

-l

Convert keys of the given map to lowercase.

-m yp_master_name

Create a special entry with the key yp_master_name. If no master hostname is specified, yp_master_name is set to the local hostname.

-o yp_output_file

Create a special entry with the key yp_output_name.

-s

Secure map. Accept connections from secure NIS networks only.

-u dbm filename

Undo a dbm file -- print out a dbm file, one entry per line, with a single space separating keys from values.

Example

It is easy to write shell scripts to convert standard files such as /etc/passwd to the key value form used by makedbm. For example, the awk program:

takes the /etc/passwd file and converts it to a form that can be read by makdbm to make the NIS file passwd.byname. That is, the key is a username and the value is the remaining line in the /etc/passwd file.