OSF DCE Administration Guide--Introduction

Global and Cell Considerations
Figure 2-1. Top Level of the Cell Namespace
hostslclhostname_chlan-profilecell-profile
bak
dfs
master
sec
dce
subsysfssec
/.:
You can use the CDS browser (cdsbrowser) or the DCE control program (dcecp) to view
the CDS part of the namespace, including the sec and fs junctions. You can use
commands such as ls to see the contents of the DFS part of the namespace and the dcecp
program to see the contents of the Security portion.
2.2.3.1 CDS Namespace Entries
The CDS namespace contains entries for servers, hosts, CDS clearinghouses (collections
of directory replicas stored at a particular server), RPC profiles, RPC groups, and
subsystems. The entries have a CDS type of directory or object, indicating the kind of
CDS object to which the name refers. A third CDS type, softlink, is an entry that points
to another entry. A CDS directory is a container in which objects are stored. CDS uses
directories to organize groups of object entries.
In addition, the CDS namespace provides specialized services for other DCE
components, such as location information contained in the fileset location database
(FLDB), which is the database that maps filesets to the file server machines on which
they reside.
Profiles cataloged in the CDS namespace specify a search path through the Directory
Service. The cell profile (/.:/cell-profile) stores the location of the servers that are
available in the cell, regardless of physical location. In a geographically dispersed cell,
servers can be located in different cities or even different countries. The LAN profile
defines alternate servers that can be used in situations where geographic proximity is
important. For example, /.:/lan-profile is the default LAN profile used by DTS. This
profile contains entries for the DTS server local set. If a cell spans more than one LAN,
another layer can be created below /.:/lan-profile to specify the location of the profile for
each part of the cell. For example, in a cell that encompasses two LANs, you can direct
hosts on one LAN to lanA-profile and hosts on the other LAN to lanB-profile.For
information on setting up multiple LAN profiles, see Chapter 8.
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