OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

Chapter 6. Managing Your Cell Name

Although cell names tend to be stable, there are times when you want to change them.

Imagine that, shortly after you install and conﬁgure a new cell, a corporate

reorganization makes your cell name inaccurate. Your old cell name

/.../sales.goodco.com doesn’t reﬂect your new divisional organization in which the cell

name /.../polyline.goodco.com would be more appropriate. What’s more, the Goodco

company has just acquired new, international afﬁliations. However, their cells are

registered in an X.500 directory service which, unfortunately, does not interconnect with

DNS, the Domain Name System in which your cell is registered.

As the cell administrator, you can solve either or both of these problems by using a cell

alias name. Cell alias names offer the ﬂexibility you need to manage your cell name,

letting you change the name of your cell or just add a second cell name as an alias that

can be registered in another global directory service.

You can use the cellalias task object to create and manage cell alias names, updating all

of the DCE services that store the name of your cell.

Cells must have two (or more) cell names to be registered in more than one global

directory service. If you are changing your cell name (instead of simply adding an alias),

you must also set the new name to be the primary cell name. In this case, the cellalias

object updates CDS, the DCE Security Service, and DCE hosts with the new primary cell

name.

Note that a previously existing cell name is not eliminated from the cell’s services. CDS

and the DCE Security Service must retain the old name so that they can respond

appropriately to any client requests bearing the old name.

This chapter discusses various aspects of global names and CDS names. If you are not

already familiar with the structure of global names and CDS names, you should read

more about them now in Part 4 of this guide.

6.1 Registering in Multiple Global Directory Services

You can make your cell resources available to users or applications in other DCE cells by

registering your cell in a global directory service such as DNS (Domain Name System)

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