OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Administration Guide—Core Components
Servers have CDS names like /.:/admin/finance/payroll/check_writer. When this
check_writer server exports its server entry name to CDS, CDS stores it in a directory
named /.:/admin/finance/payroll. Consequently, clients won’t confuse this
check_writer with another check_writer named
/.:/admin/finance/accts_payable/check_writer. Thus, unique server entry names fill a
critical administration need, providing a way to access and control individual servers.
Part 4 of this book provides more information about CDS and the structure and uses of
CDS names. For our current purposes, it’s enough to know how and why CDS directory
names help make potentially identical server entries unique.
While servers themselves often manage exporting and removing their names and binding
information from CDS, sometimes administrators need to manually add, change, or
remove binding information. For instance, when a server host machine crashes
unexpectedly and stays offline for a long time, its resident servers cannot remove their
entry names and binding information from CDS. Clients can waste time looking for
these phantom servers. The DCE control program provides the rpcentry object that you
can use to manage server entry names and their binding information in CDS.
Before we get to the actual management tasks, let’s examine a server entry to see exactly
what it is we’ll be managing. Figure 10-2 shows possible information in a server entry.
Figure 10-2. Possible Information in a Server Entry
Interface UUID/version pair 1
with binding information 1
Interface UUID/version pair 1
with binding information 2
Interface UUID/version pair 1
with binding information 3
Interface UUID/version pair 2
with binding information 1
Interface UUID/version pair 2
with binding information 3
Object UUID 2
Object UUID 3
Object UUID 4
Object UUID 1
One Server Entry
Bindings
Objects
The top part of Figure 10-2 contains bindings. Each binding consists of an interface
identifier and a binding. The interface identifier identifies an interface offered by the
server, and its binding information indicates the host address and network transport to
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