Getting Information About Access Points

Summary

There are various kinds of generic information you can retrieve about an XPA access point by using the xpaget command.


You can find out which XPA access points have been registered with the currently running XPA name server by executing the xpaget command to retrieve info from the XPA name server:

  xpaget xpans
If, for example, the stest test server program is running, the following XPA access points will be returned (the specifics of the returned info will vary for different machines and users):
  XPA xpa1 gs 838e2f67:1262 eric
  XPA xpa1a gs 838e2f67:1266 eric
  XPA xpac gs 838e2f67:1267 eric
  XPA xpai i 838e2f67:1268 eric
Note that access to this information is subject to the usual XPA Access Control restrictions.

Each XPA access point supports a number of reserved sub-commands that provide access to different kinds of information, e.g. the access control for that access point. These sub-commands can be executed by using xpaset or xpaget at the command line, or XPAGet() or XPASet() in programs, e.g:

  xpaget SAOtng -acl
  xpaget SAOtng -help
  xpaget SAOtng env FOO

  xpaset -p SAOtng env FOO foofoo
The following reserved sub-commands are defined for all access points:

-acl get (set) the access control list [options: host type acl, for set]
The 'xpaset' option allows you to add a new acl for a given host, or change the acl for an existing host. See XPA Access Control for more information.

-env get (set) an environment variable [options: name (value, for set)]
The 'xpaget' option will return the value of the named environment variable. The 'xpaset' option will set the value of the names variable to the specified value.

-exec set: execute commands from buffer [options: none]
If -exec is specified in the paramlist of an 'xpaset' call, then further sub-commands will be retrieved from the data buffer.

-help get: return help string for this XPA or sub-command [options: name (for sub-commands)]
Each XPA access point and each XPA sub-command can have a help string associated with it that is specified when the access point is defined. The -help option will return this help string. For XPA access points that contain user-defined sub-commands, you can get the help string for a particular sub-command by specifying its name, or else get the help strings for all sub-commands if not name is specified.

-ltimeout get (set) the long timeout value [options: seconds|reset]
The 'xpaget' option will return the value of the long timeout (in seconds). The 'xpaset' option will set the value of the long timeout. If "reset" is specified, then the timeout value will be reset to the default value.

-nsconnect set: re-establish name server connection to all XPA's [options: none]
If the XPA Name Server (xpans) process has terminated unexpectedly and then re-started, this sub-command can be used to re-establish the connection. You use it by sending the command to the [name:port] or [file] of the access point instead of to the XPA name (since the latter requires the xpans connection!):
  xpaset -p 838e2f67:1268 -nsconnect
See xpans for more information.

-nsdisconnect set: break name server connection to all XPA's [options: none]
This sub-command will terminate the connection to the XPA Name Server (xpans), thereby making all access points inaccessible except through their underlying [name:port] or [file] identifiers. I forget why we added it, it seems pretty useless.

-stimeout get (set) the short timeout value [options: seconds|reset]
The 'xpaget' option will return the value of the short timeout (in seconds). The 'xpaset' option will set the value of the short timeout. If "reset" is specified, then the timeout value will be reset to the default value.

-version get: return XPA version string [options: none]
The version refers to the version of XPA used to define this access point (currently something like 2.0).

You can add your own reserved commands to all XPA access points by using the XPACmdAdd() routine, passing the XPA handle returned by XPA XPAGetReserved(void) as the first argument.


Index to the XPA Help Pages

Last updated: May 18, 1999