nistbladm(1) User Commands nistbladm(1)
NAME
nistbladm - NIS+ table administration command
SYNOPSIS
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 -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
AVAILABILITY
SUNWnisu
DESCRIPTION
The nistbladm command is used to administer NIS+ tables.
There are five primary operations that it performs: creat-
ing 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 combina-
tion 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 combina-
tion with B).
access is specified in the format as defined by the nisch-
mod(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
OPTIONS
-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 dupli-
cate 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.
-m Modify an entry in the table that is speci-
fied by indexedname. Note: Since it is pos-
sible to modify the value in a column that
would change the indexed name for an entry
both the column value pair and the indexed
name are required. It uses the indexed name
to look up the entry, modify it, and write it
back with the new value. The indexed name
must uniquely identify a single entry.
-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 differ-
ence between the interpretation of the lower-
case `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. How-
ever, it is sometimes desirable to remove
more than one entry, as when you are attempt-
ing 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 char-
acter (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 nisch-
mod(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 cri-
teria 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 char-
acter. The separator character is used by
niscat(1) when displaying tables on the stan-
dard 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.
RETURN VALUES
This command returns 0 on success and 1 on failure.
EXAMPLES
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 any-
one.
In this example, if the access rights had not been speci-
fied, 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 pro-
tected 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.
ENVIRONMENT
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)).
SEE ALSO
nis+(1), niscat(1), nischmod(1), nischown(1), nisde-
faults(1), nismatch(1), nissetup(1M)
WARNINGS
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.
SunOS 5.4 Last change: 22 Feb 1993