OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Administration Guide—Core Components
An application programmer or administrator could solve these kinds of problems by
writing a script or application that monitors server operation, automatically starting or
restarting servers when necessary. Such solutions frequently rely on host utilities like
startup and shutdown programs or schedulers like cron. However, this often requires
administrators to log into separate system administration accounts on each host.
Moreover, this approach places more burden on developers and administrators to devise
independent server control mechanisms which may not be portable, especially in
heterogeneous environments.
DCE solves some of these problems by providing a server control facility that offers a
variety of ways to control DCE application servers. The server control facility is part of
the DCE daemon (dced) so servers can rely on it wherever dced runs. Additionally, the
facility’s administration functions are accessible via dcecp, so administrators can use
consistent (portable) methods to manage servers from any host where dcecp is available.
Furthermore, access to the server control facility is authenticated, preventing
unauthorized or accidental tampering of server control information.
The following sections show some common configuration needs and describe ways to
configure and unconfigure servers, how to start and stop servers, and how to view server
information.
10.1.1 Common Server Configuration Needs
Before you configure a server, you might need to perform some preliminary steps. If a
server uses DCE authentication and authorization, its principal name must be registered
with the DCE Security Service or run under the DCE identity of the parent process. For
details on creating server accounts, see Chapter 31.
10.1.1.1 Naming Server Configuration Information
Server configuration information is accessible using a name of the form:
/.../cellname/hosts/hostname/config/srvrconf/servername. If you have the necessary
permissions, you can use the global name to access the configuration database on a
remote host (even a host in another cell). The following example shows configuration
information for the video_clip server on host krypton in remote cell
/.../their_cell.goodco.com:
dcecp> server show \
/.../their_cell.goodco.com/hosts/krypton/config/srvrconf/video_clip
{uuid 2fa417e8-bb4c-11cd-831b-0000c08adf56}
{program {vclip}}
{arguments {-catalog}}
.
. (Output Omitted)
.
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