Manual Pages  — SERVICES_MKDB

The services_mkdb utility creates a db(3) database for the specified file. If no file is specified, then /etc/services is used. The database is installed into /var/db/services.db. The file must be in the correct format (see services(5)).

The options are as follows:

-b
	Use big-endian byte order for database metadata.
-l
	Use little-endian byte order for database metadata.
-o database
	Put the output databases in the named file.
-q
	Do not warn about duplicate services.
-u
	Print the services file to stdout, omitting duplicate entries and comments.

The databases are used by the C library services routines (see getservent(3)).

The -b and -l flags are mutually exclusive. The default byte ordering is the current host order.

db(3), getservent(3), services(5)

Because services_mkdb guarantees not to install a partial destination file it must build a temporary file in the same file system and if successful use rename(2) to install over the destination file.

If services_mkdb fails it will leave the previous version of the destination file intact.