nistbladm(1) manual page
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nistbladm - NIS+ table administration command
nistbladm -a|-A
[ -D defaults ] colname=value ... tablename
nistbladm -a|-A [ -D defaults ] indexedname
nistbladm -c [ -D defaults ] [ -p path ] [ -s sep ] type colname=[flags][,access]
... tablename
nistbladm -d tablename
nistbladm -e|-E colname=value ... indexedname
nistbladm -m colname=value ... indexedname
nistbladm -r|-R [ colname=value ... ]
tablename
nistbladm -r|-R indexedname
nistbladm -u [ -p path ] [ -s sep ] [ -t
type ] [ colname=access ... ] tablename
SUNWnisu
The nistbladm command is used to administer NIS+
tables. There are five
primary operations that it performs: creating and deleting tables, adding
entries to, modifying entries within, and removing entries from tables.
Though NIS+ does not place restrictions on the size of tables or entries,
the size of data has an impact on the performance and the disk space requirements
of the NIS+ server. NIS+ is not designed to store huge pieces of data, such
as files; instead pointer to files should be stored in NIS+.
NIS+ design
is optimized to support 10,000 objects with a total size of 10M bytes. If
the requirements exceed the above, it is suggested that the domain hierarchy
be created, or the data stored in the tables be pointers to the actual
data, instead of the data itself.
When creating tables, a table type, type,
and a list of column definitions must be provided.
type is a string that
is stored in the table and later used by the service to verify that entries
being added to it are of the correct type.
Syntax for column definitions
is:
colname=[flags][,access]
flags is a combination of:
- S
- Searchable. Specifies
that searches can be done on the column’s values (see nismatch(1)
).
- I
- Case-insensitive
(only makes sense in combination with S). Specifies that searches should
ignore case.
- C
- Crypt. Specifies that the column’s values should be encrypted.
- B
- Binary data (does not make sense in combination with S). If not set, the
column’s values are expected to be null terminated ASCII strings.
- X
- XDR encoded data (only makes sense in combination with B).
access is
specified in the format as defined by the nischmod(1)
command.
When manipulating
entries, this command takes two forms of entry name. The first uses a series
of space separated colname=value pairs that specify column values in the
entry. The second is a NIS+
indexed name, indexedname, of the form:
- [ colname=value,
... ],tablename
- -a | A
- Add entries to a NIS+
table. The difference between
the lowercase ‘a’ and the uppercase ‘A’ is in the treatment of preexisting
entries. The entry’s contents are specified by the column=value pairs on
the command line. Note: Values for all columns must be specified when adding
entries to a table.
- Normally,
- NIS+
reports an error if an attempt is made
to add an entry to a table that would overwrite an entry that already exists.
This prevents multiple parties from adding duplicate entries and having
one of them get overwritten. If you wish to force the add, the uppercase
‘A’ specifies that the entry is to be added, even if it already exists. This
is analogous to a modify operation on the entry.
- -c
- Create a table named
tablename in the namespace. The table that is created must have at least
one column and at least one column must be searchable.
- -d tablename
- Destroy
the table named tablename. The table that is being destroyed must be empty.
The table’s contents can be deleted with the -R option below.
- -e|E
- Edit the
entry in the table that is specified by indexdname. indexdname must uniquely
identify a single entry. It is possible to edit the value in a column that
would change the indexed name of an entry.
- The change
- (colname=value)
may affect other entries in the table if the change results in an entry
whose indexed name is different from indexedname and which matches that
of another existing entry. In this case, the -e option will fail and an
error will be reported. The -E option will force the replacement of the existing
entry by the new entry (effectively removing two old entries and adding
a new one).
- -m
- A synonym for -E. This option has been superseded by the -E option.
- -r|R
- Remove entries from a table. The entry is specified by either a series
of column=value pairs on the command line, or an indexed name that is
specified as entryname. The difference between the interpretation of the
lowercase ‘r’ versus the uppercase ‘R’ is in the treatment of non-unique entry
specifications. Normally the NIS+
server will disallow an attempt to remove
an entry when the search criterion specified for that entry resolves to
more than one entry in the table. However, it is sometimes desirable to
remove more than one entry, as when you are attempting to remove all of
the entries from a table. In this case, using the uppercase ‘R’ will force
the NIS+
server to remove all entries matching the passed search criterion.
If that criterion is null and no column values specified, then all entries
in the table will be removed.
- -u
- Update attributes of a table. This allows the concatenation path (-p),
separation character (specified with the (-s)), column access rights, and
table type string (-t) of a table to be changed. Neither the number of columns,
nor the columns that are searchable may be changed.
- -D defaults
- When creating
objects, this option specifies a different set of defaults to be used
during this operation. The defaults string is a series of tokens separated
by colons. These tokens represent the default values to be used for the
generic object properties. All of the legal tokens are described below.
- ttl=time
- This token sets the default time to live for objects that are created by
this command. The value time is specified in the format as defined by the
nischttl(1)
command. The default value is 12 hours.
- owner=ownername
- This token specifies that the NIS+
principal ownername
should own the created object. Normally this value is the same as the principal
who is executing the command.
- group=groupname
- This token specifies that
the group groupname should be the group owner for the object that is created.
The default value is NULL.
- access=rights
- This token specifies the set of access rights that are to
be granted for the given object. The value rights is specified in the format
as defined by the nischmod(1)
command. The default value is ----rmcdr---r---.
- -p path
- When creating or updating a table, this option specifies the table’s search
path. When a nis_list() function is invoked, the user can specify the flag
FOLLOW_PATH
to tell the client library to continue searching tables in
the table’s path if the search criteria used does not yield any entries.
The path consists of an ordered list of table names, separated by colons.
The names in the path must be fully qualified.
- -s sep
- When creating or updating
a table, this option specifies the table’s separator character. The separator
character is used by niscat(1)
when displaying tables on the standard
output. Its purpose is to separate column data when the table is in ASCII
form. The default value is a space.
- -t type
- When updating a table, this option
specifies the table’s type string.
This command returns 0 on
success and 1 on failure.
This example creates a table named hobbies
in the directory foo.com. of the type hobby_tbl with two searchable columns,
name and hobby.
example% nistbladm -c hobby_tbl name=S,a+r,o+m hobby=S,a+r
hobbies.foo.com.
The column name has read access for all (that is,
owner, group, and world) and modify access for only the owner. The column
hobby is readable by all, but not modifiable by anyone.
In this example,
if the access rights had not been specified, the tables access rights would
have come from either the standard defaults or the NIS_DEFAULTS
variable
(see below).
To add entries to this table:
example% nistbladm -a name=bob hobby=skiing hobbies.foo.com.
example% nistbladm -a name=sue hobby=skiing hobbies.foo.com.
example% nistbladm -a name=ted hobby=swimming hobbies.foo.com.
To add the concatenation
path:
example% nistbladm -u -p hobbies.bar.com.:hobbies.baz.com. hobbies
To delete the skiers
from our list:
example% nistbladm -R hobby=skiing hobbies.foo.com.
Note: The use of the -r option
would fail because there are two entries with the value of skiing.
To create
a table with a column that is named with no flags set, you supply only
the name and the equals (=) sign as follows.
example% nistbladm -c notes_tbl name=S,a+r,o+m note= notes.foo.com.
This example
created a table, named notes.foo.com., of type notes_tbl with two columns
name and note. The note column is not searchable.
When entering data for
columns in the form of a value string, it is essential that terminal characters
be protected by single or double quotes. These are the characters equals
(=), comma (,), left bracket ([), right bracket (]), and space ( ). These
characters are parsed by NIS+
within an indexed name. These characters are
protected by enclosing the entire value in double quote (") characters
as follows.
example% nistbladm -a fullname="Joe User" nickname=Joe nicknames
If there is any doubt about how the string will be parsed, it is better
to enclose it in quotes.
- NIS_DEFAULTS
- This variable contains a defaults string that
will be override the NIS+
standard defaults. If the -D switch is used those
values will then override both the NIS_DEFAULTS
variable and the standard
defaults.
- NIS_PATH
- If this variable is set, and the NIS+
table name is
not fully qualified, each directory specified will be searched until the
table is found (see nisdefaults(1)
).
nis+(1)
, niscat(1)
, nischmod(1)
,
nischown(1)
, nisdefaults(1)
, nismatch(1)
, nissetup(1M)
To modify
one of the entries, say, for example, from ‘bob’ to ‘robert’:
- example% nistbladm
-m name=robert [name=bob],hobbies
Note that ‘[name=bob],hobbies’ is an indexed
name, and that the characters ‘[’ (open bracket) and ‘]’ (close bracket) are
interpreted by the shell. When typing entry names in the form of NIS+
indexed
names, the name must be protected by using single quotes.
It is possible
to specify a set of defaults such that you cannot read or modify the table
object later.
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