OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Administration Guide—Core Components
18.4 Skulking a Directory
The skulk operation is a periodic distribution of recent modifications that were made to
the namespace. CDS skulks every directory at regular intervals according to the value
assigned to the directory’s CDS_Convergence attribute. To ensure that updates are
distributed to all replicas of a directory as soon as possible, you can initiate a skulk of
the directory by using the directory synchronize command rather than waiting for the
next scheduled skulk to distribute the new information. You can use this command to
perform the following tasks:
• Distribute crucial updates that were made to a directory’s contents or replica set
when you do not want to wait for the next skulk
• Skulk directories that store replicas on servers that were inoperative for an extended
period and were just brought back online
18.4.1 Permissions for Skulking a Directory
To skulk a directory, you must have the following permissions:
• Administer, write, insert, or delete permission to the directory.
• The server principal for the server system where you enter the directory
synchronize command needs read, write, and administer permissions to the
directory that you intend to skulk.
If the server is included in the server authorization group subsys/dce/cds-servers,
these permissions should already be in place. If in doubt, use the acl show command
to verify that the server principal has the appropriate permissions. (See the
acl(8dce) reference page for complete information on the acl show command
arguments.)
18.4.2 Entering the directory synchronize Command
Use the directory synchronize command to initiate an immediate skulk on a directory.
After you enter the command, dcecp temporarily suspends the dcecp> prompt while the
skulk is in progress. Skulks of directories with large replica sets may take some time to
execute. If the prompt returns with no error messages, the skulk is successful. If error
messages are displayed before the prompt returns, the skulk failed.
For a skulk to succeed, every replica in the directory’s replica set must be reachable.
Skulks may sometimes fail, especially on directories with large replica sets, or when the
servers that store replicas of the directory are located over great distances where
network connectivity is not always reliable.
18 − 8 Tandem Computers Incorporated 124243