OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Application Development Guide—Core Components

Servers are typically conﬁgured by an administrator using the dcecp server object in a

script after the server is installed on the host. In addition to conﬁguring the server, this

script would commonly include other tasks like create an account and assign a principal

name for the server, modify the ACLs and key table ﬁles (keytabs) to control access to

the server and its resources, and export the server binding information to the Cell

Directory Service (CDS) so that clients can ﬁnd a server that will start dynamically later.

After a server is conﬁgured, whether it runs as a persistent daemon or an on-demand

(dynamic) process, administrators would again use dcecp if they need to control or

modify its behavior. Although server management is typically an administrator’s task,

you may want a management application to perform these tasks, including the following:

• Conﬁgure a server to describe how it can be invoked

• Start a server based on conﬁguration data

• Stop a running server

• Disable a speciﬁc service provided by a running server

• Enable a speciﬁc service for a running server

• Modify a server’s conﬁguration

• Delete a server’s conﬁguration, effectively removing the server from dced’s control

2.6.1 Two States of Server Management: Conﬁguration and Execution

If all servers ran as persistent processes, dced could maintain data about each server in a

single (albeit complex) data structure. However, due to the fact that some servers may

run on demand, it is a more ﬂexible design to have two sets of data: one that describes

the default conﬁguration to start the server, and one that describes the executing

(running) server. Earlier in this chapter when we described dced service naming, we

deﬁned srvrconf and srvrexec objects to name the two portions of the server

management service.

Table 2-1 lists the routines that applications can use to control servers. It also shows the

valid object names to use when establishing a dced binding prior to using the routine.

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