pcf.4 (2010 09)

p
pcf(4) pcf(4)
NAME
pcf - port configuration file used by DDFA software
Description
A port configuration file is used by the Datacommunications and Terminal Controller Device File Access
(DDFA) software to configure individual terminal server ports. The generic name of the template file is
pcf. In practice, it is renamed for each port that needs different configuration values and the values are
altered appropriately for the device attached to the port. A port configuration file is referenced by an
entry in the Dedicated Ports file (
dp). The Dedicated Port Parser (
dpp) parses the dp file and spawns
an Outbound Connection Daemon (
ocd) for each valid entry in the
dp file. A valid entry is one in which
the fourth field is the name of a port configuration file.
The master port configuration file is
/usr/examples/ddfa/pcf
and it should only be referenced in
the
dp file if the default values it contains are correct for the ports. If different values are needed,
/usr/examples/ddfa/pcf
should be copied to another directory and the copy should be modified
and referenced in the
dp file. The recommended procedure is to create a directory to hold the port
configuration files and the modified
dp file.
See ddfa (7) for more information on how to configure the DDFA software.
A port configuration file consists of the names of variables and their values. The variables are shown ter-
minated by a colon (
:), but this is not mandatory. A variable and its value can be separated by spaces or
tabs. Only one variable-value pair is allowed per line. Only the value should be altered. The variable
name should not be changed.
A file contains the following information:
telnet_mode: This can have the value disable or enable. When it is enabled, data transfer
over the network uses the Telnet protocol. This option must be enabled for a DTC.
timing_mark: This can have the value disable or enable. When it is enabled, a telnet timing
mark negotiation is sent to the terminal server after all user data has been
transferred. ocd waits for a reply to the timing mark negotiation before closing
the connection. This ensures that all data has been output from the terminal server
to the device before the buffers are flushed. It should be enabled for a DTC.
telnet_timer: This defines the time in seconds during which the software waits for a response to
the telnet timing mark and binary negotiation. If the timer expires, an error mes-
sage is logged to /var/adm/syslog
and the error is transmitted to the user
application.
binary_mode: This can have the value disable or enable. When it is enabled, data transfer
over the network is in binary mode and treatment of special characters (such as
XON/XOFF) is disabled.
Due to the absence of flow control, data integrity cannot be guaranteed when
binary_mode is enabled.
Note that even if
binary_mode is disabled, it can be negotiated at any time by
the application setting IXON to 0 in the termio data structure.
open_tries: This defines the number of times the software tries to open a connection before giv-
ing up. If the value is 0 the software tries ‘‘forever’’ (approximately 68 years). If
the retry process fails, an error message is logged to /var/adm/syslog and the
error is transmitted to the user application.
The retry process can be interrupted by sending the
SIGUSR2 signal to the ocd
process using kill -17 pid.
Note that if the application exits after asking
ocd to open the connection to the ter-
minal server, ocd continues trying to open until the combination of the
open_tries and open_timer are exceeded.
open_timer: This defines the time in seconds between open tries. If the value is 0, ocd uses an
exponential retry period algorithm up to 32 seconds (i.e., 124816323232...).
close_timer: This defines the time in seconds between the close call made by the application on
the pty slave and the moment when the connection is actually closed. Setting this
value to, for example, 5 seconds avoids the overhead of opening and closing the con-
nection when a spooler spools several files at a time. Setting a sufficiently high
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