OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

Chapter 7. Managing DCE Hosts

Larger DCE cells can contain many host computers, with some running both DCE

servers and application servers while others act only as client systems. Still other hosts

might run application servers but also act as clients to their resident users. Such

ﬂexibility in DCE host conﬁgurations can make it difﬁcult to control or track what’s

running or available on each host in a cell. The host task object represents DCE and

application processes associated with hosts, letting administrators more easily manage

DCE server and application processes on machines.

You can use the host task object to show information about processes on local and

remote hosts in a cell, and start and stop DCE processes on hosts throughout a cell. You

can also conﬁgure local DCE hosts in a cell and remove (unconﬁgure) remote DCE hosts

from a cell. Online help for this object is available using the host help and host

operations commands in dcecp.

All of the host object operations performed on a remote host except host catalog require

dced to be running on the remote host.

7.1 Listing the DCE Hosts in a Cell

You can determine the number and names of DCE hosts conﬁgured in your DCE cell by

using the host catalog operation. This operation might be useful for determining

whether a speciﬁc host has already been conﬁgured into your cell. The host does not

have to be running for this operation to work because the host catalog operation actually

performs a directory list /.:/hosts operation and doesn’t interact with the host. This

method relies on the convention that hosts register their names in the /.:/hosts directory.

If your hosts register in some other directory, you need to modify the host catalog

operation in the host task object. You can read more about the purpose and use of CDS

directories in Chapter 18.

The host catalog operation resembles the cell show operation except that it doesn’t

separately list DCE servers. The following example operation lists all DCE hosts that

have been conﬁgured in the cell:

dcecp> host catalog

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