cdbfasta is one of two platform independent file-based tools released by G. Pertea at TIGR,w which are required for the qiime pipeline. cdbfasta creating indices for quick retrieval of any particular sequences from large multi-FASTA files. The partner program is called cdbyank, which is used to retrieve sequence entries from a file indexed using cdbfasta.

If you are interested in indexing fastafiles, we recommend you look at more commonly used alternatives that are available on Bio-Linux. One worth considering is dbifasta in the EMBOSS suite of tools.