GDBM Question for our Resident Database Guru

Hey Layne, do you know anything about GDBM databases? I pretty much have no idea how they work or how they're different from SQL databases.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to resurrect an old TinyMUSH 2.0p7 MUSH from a large database backup that may or may not be corrupt, and TinyMUSH uses GDBM in *nix for its database. I'm having trouble converting it to a recent format for modern TinyMUSH 3.1 to use. The tools to do so come with the MUSH -- I've been using the TinyMUSH 2.2.5 "dbconvert" tool to dump a flatfile that the new MUSH version can read. Also, I'd like to compile TinyMUSH 2.0p7 on CentOS to use its tool, but since it's so old, I'm having trouble.

Any ideas on how I might analyze the DB to determine if it's corrupt? If it comes down to it, I'm willing to fix it by hand, although it might take forever since this thing is 17 megabytes in size (huge for a 1994 MUSH DB).

If anyone else knows anything about this, please reply as well.