NAME
db_dump185 - dump DB 1.85 legacy database files
SYNOPSIS
db_dump185 [-p] [-f output] db_file
DESCRIPTION
The db_dump185 utility reads the version 1.85 database file db_file and
writes it to the standard output using a portable flat-text format
understood by the db_load(1) utility. The argument db_file must be a
file produced using the version 1.85 DB library functions.
The options are as follows:
-f Write to the specified file instead of to the standard output.
-p If characters in either the key or data items are printing
characters (as defined by isprint(3)), use printing characters in
file to represent them. This option permits users to use standard
text editors to modify the contents of databases.
Note, different systems may have different notions as to what
characters are ‘‘printing’’, and databases dumped in this manner
may be less portable to external systems.
Dumping and reloading hash databases that use user-defined hash
functions will result in new databases that use the default hash
function. While using the default hash function may not be optimal for
the new database, it will continue to work correctly.
Dumping and reloading btree databases that use user-defined prefix or
comparison functions will result in new databases that use the default
prefix and comparison functions. In this case, it is quite likely that
the database will be damaged beyond repair permitting neither record
storage or retrieval.
The only available workaround for either case is to modify the sources
for the db_load(1) utility to load the database using the correct hash,
prefix and comparison functions.
The db_dump utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
OUTPUT FORMATS
There are two output formats used by db_dump.
In both output formats, the first few lines of the output contain
header information describing the underlying access method, filesystem
page size and other bookkeeping information. This information is
output in ‘‘name=value’’ pairs, where ‘‘name’’ may be any of the
keywords listed in the db_load(1) manual page, and ‘‘value’’ will be
its value. While this header information can be edited before the
database is reloaded, there is rarely any reason to do so, as all of
this information can be overridden by command-line arguments to
db_load.
Following the header information are the key/data pairs from the
database. If the database being dumped is of type btree or hash, the
output will be paired lines of text, where the first line of the pair
is the key item, and the second line of the pair is its corresponding
data item. If the database being dumped is of type recno, the output
will be lines of text, where each line is a new data item for the
database.
If the -p option was specified, each output line will consist of single
characters representing any characters from the database that were
‘‘printing’’, and backslash (‘‘\’’) escaped characters for any that
were not. Backslash characters appearing in the output mean one of two
things: if the backslash character precedes another backslash
character, it means that a literal backslash character occurred in the
key or data item. If the backslash character precedes any other
character, the next two characters should be interpreted as hexadecimal
specification of a single character, e.g., ‘‘\0a’’ is a newline
character in the ASCII character set.
If the -p option was not specified, each output line will consist of
paired hexadecimal values, e.g., the line ‘‘726f6f74’’ is the string
‘‘root’’ in the ASCII character set.
In both output formats, a single newline character ends both the key
and data items.
SEE ALSO
isprint(3)
The DB library is a family of groups of functions that provides a
modular programming interface to transactions and record-oriented file
access. The library includes support for transactions, locking,
logging and file page caching, as well as various indexed access
methods. Many of the functional groups (e.g., the file page caching
functions) are useful independent of the other DB functions, although
some functional groups are explicitly based on other functional groups
(e.g., transactions and logging).
db_archive(1), db_checkpoint(1), db_deadlock(1), db_dump(1),
db_load(1), db_recover(1), db_stat(1). (Note that on Debian systems,
some of these manpages and programs have been renamed to things like
db4.3_stat to distinguish between the multiple DB versions.)