creating an aliases.cdb without newaliases?

[Collin B. McClendon]

I've looked and not found much so here goes:
I have used newaliases on several systems, however it only creates an
aliases.db. 
Perhaps I'm overlooking something simple. I've gotten the cdb source, used
cdbmake, doesn't
seem compatible, cdbmake-12 does the same thing. I end up with a .cdb file
however 
printforward won't read it. 
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Collin