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Mac OS X for Unix Geeks
book

Mac OS X for Unix Geeks

by Ernest E. Rothman, Brian Jepson
September 2002
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
216 pages
7h 43m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Mac OS X for Unix Geeks

NetInfo Utilities

This chapter demonstrates four NetInfo utilities: nicl, nireport, nidump, and niload. Table 3-1 describes these and other NetInfo utilities.

Table 3-1. NetInfo tools

Tool

Description

nicl

Provides a command-line interface to NetInfo.

nidump

Extracts flat file format data (such as /etc/passwd) from NetInfo.

nifind

Finds a NetInfo directory.

nigrep

Performs a regular expression search on NetInfo.

niload

Loads flat file format data (such as /etc/passwd) into NetInfo.

nireport

Prints tables from NetInfo.

The nidump and nireport utilities display the contents of the NetInfo database. niload loads the contents of flat files—such as /etc/passwd or /etc/hosts—into NetInfo. niutil directly manipulates the NetInfo database; it’s the command-line equivalent of NetInfo Manager. To modify the NetInfo database, use sudo with these commands or first log in as the root user. NetInfo commands that can be performed as a normal user are shown with the % prompt. If you need superuser privileges, the # prompt is shown. (Because the user can modify the shell prompt, be careful using this as a visual cue on a real system.)

Unlike other ni* utilities, nicl acts directly on the database files. Consequently, you can use nicl to modify the local directory even when Directory Services is not running (such as when you boot into single-user mode).

Warning

When you use niload, nicl, or niutil, you are making potentially dangerous changes to your system. ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596003560Errata Page