Ordinarily, makemap is safety-conscious. It will issue a warning, or abort, if any of the following three circumstances are present.

If makemap is run by root, and if the directory into which the database will be written is writable by anyone other than root, makemap will issue this warning:

WARNING: World writable directory directory

If the database file already exists and is a symbolic link, makemap will print the following error and abort:

makemap: error creating type hash map access: Symbolic links not allowed

Finally, if the database file already exists and is a hard link, makemap will print this error and abort:

makemap: error creating type hash map access: Hard links not allowed

If you wish to override these causes for rejection, you can do so by using this -s switch. But be aware that these warnings and errors are printed for good reasons. Circumventing them might open your machine to security risks.