OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

DCE Control Program Introduction

• The dcecp language allows the use of variables, if statements, looping functions and

other programming operations that let you boost the power of your operations. For

instance, looping functions let you repeat operations on multiple objects such as

users, servers, or CDS entries.

• Administrators can easily share their tools because scripts can be moved to foreign

platforms without change. For instance, enterprises with multiple cells could use

dcecp scripts to propagate a common cell conﬁguration throughout the enterprise.

The DCE control program is an administrative interface that you can use to manage most

aspects of the DCE core components. You can’t use dcecp to manage every aspect of

DCE. First, not all of the existing programs are replaced by dcecp. For instance dcecp

cannot control GDS or DFS. Second, even when dcecp replaces a control program such

as cdscp, not every operation in the control program is necessarily implemented by

dcecp. Typically unimplemented operations are those that are performed only once or

relatively infrequently. OSF plans to implement all DCE operations in dcecp eventually.

For now, you’ll have to use the individual component control programs to perform

operations not implemented in dcecp.

The chapters in Part 1 discuss how you can use dcecp to administer the core services in

your DCE environment. We also discuss how to make your operations do more by using

Tcl constructs on the command line and by writing your own customized operations as

scripts. We don’t provide a complete discussion of Tcl or its companion toolkit (called

Tk) for the X11 window system. For in-depth discussions of these topics, refer to Tcl and

1.2 DCE Administration Objects

A DCE cell consists of many things that need administration. As examples, CDS servers

(clearinghouses), DTS clocks, and server location information are all entities in a DCE

cell that require administration in one way or another. The DCE control program treats

all of DCE’s administrative entities as individual administration objects.

You operate on an entity by invoking its object name with some operation. For example,

to check the time of a DTS clock, you invoke the object’s name (clock) and the desired

operation (show) as in the following:

dcecp> clock show

1994-09-23-10:46:42.016-04:00I-----

dcecp>

Each administrative entity in DCE has a corresponding administration object in the DCE

control program. As a few examples, you can manage CDS clearinghouse operations in

a cell by using the clearinghouse object. Manage application servers and their

conﬁguration information on DCE hosts by using the server object. Compare and

manipulate time information using the utc object. Administer users in a DCE cell with

the user object. These examples represent just a few of the dcecp administration

objects. All of the objects are listed in the dcecp(8dce) reference page.

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