HP DCE/9000 Application Development Tools for HP-UX 11i Release Note

HP DCE/9000 Version 1.8 Application Development Tools for HP-UX 11i Release Note

Developing DCE Applications with HP DCE/9000

timestamp should be between 0 to 5000 ms (milliseconds). Typically 2000 ms is used in most

cases.

RPC_RESTRICTED_PORTS Environment Variable

The capability to restrict the assignment of endpoints to those in a user-speciﬁed set was

added to RPC in OSF DCE 1.0.3. This allows DCE applications to operate in environments in

which inter-network trafﬁc is restricted to speciﬁed endpoints. The facility is activated by

setting the RPC_RESTRICTED_PORTS environment variable with the list of end points to

which dynamic assignment should be restricted before starting an RPC application.

RPC_RESTRICTED_PORTS governs only the dynamic assignment of server and client ports

by the RPC runtime. It does not affect well-known endpoints.

The facility is turned on by setting the RPC_RESTRICTED_PORTS environment variable

before starting an RPC application. The syntax of the variable is as follows:

<entry> [COLON <entry>]*

LEFT-BRACKET <ranges> RIGHT-BRACKET

<ranges>: <range> [COMMA <range>]

*<range> : <endpoint-low> HYPHEN <endpoint-high>

For example:

ncacn_ip_tcp[5000-5110,5500-5521]:ncadg_ip_udp[6500-7000]

To use RPC_RESTRICTED_PORTS for DCE itself, set the environment variable before

starting your cell. The environment variable must be set whenever you restart DCE.

Note that this facility does not add any security to RPC and is not intended as a security

feature. It merely facilitates conﬁguring a network "ﬁre wall" to allow incoming calls to DCE

servers.

RPC Authentication

The OSF DCE Application Development Guide and the OSF DCE Application Development

Reference may be misleading about what happens when an unauthenticated client calls a

server that has speciﬁed authentication. In such a case, theRPC runtime will not perform any

authentication, and the call will either reach the server manager code, or be rejected by the

runtime, depending on the following conditions:

• If the client speciﬁed no authentication, then none is attempted by the RPC runtime. The

call reaches the manager code whether the server speciﬁed authentication or not. This

permits both authenticated and unauthenticated clients to call authenticated servers.

When the manager receives an unauthenticated call, it must make a decision about how to

proceed.