Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Directory Services Utilities

This chapter demonstrates four Directory Services utilities: dscl, nireport, nidump, and niload. Table 11-1 describes these and other NetInfo utilities.

Table 11-1. NetInfo tools

Tool	Description
dscl	Provides a command-line interface to Directory Services
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
niutil	NetInfo utility for manipulating the database

The nidump and nireport utilities display the contents of the local directory. niload loads the contents of flat files (such as /etc/passwd or /etc/hosts) into Directory Services. niutil directly manipulates the Directory Services database; it’s the command-line equivalent of NetInfo Manager. To make changes, use sudo with these commands or first log in as the root user. The commands that can be performed as a normal user are shown without the sudo command in the examples that follow.

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 any of these utilities, you are making potentially dangerous changes to your ...