Re: Finding an initial name-servive using multicasting

[Ilguiz Latypov <ilatypov diskstream com>]

Magnus,

On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 06:35:46PM +0200, Magnus Bergman wrote:
> Thanks, that leads me a step closer to a solution. But I'm slightly
> confused, orbit doesn't seem to include orbit-name-server-2 any longer,
> it just seems to be implemented in a library. That's the deal with that?
> (I might be even more of a newbie.)

Some Linux distributions might not include the ORBit2 name server
because Gnome applications register with a different server (OAF?
Bonobo?  Please correct me.)

The name server is in the ORBit2 CVS repository along with the
name resolution client.

> >      orbit-name-server-2 -ORBIIOPIPv4=1 -ORBIIOPIPSock=2809 \
> >                          -ORBIIOPUNIX=0 -ORBCorbaloc=1 \
> >                          --key=NameService
> 
> This I probably don't understand since I can't see the use for it. So I
> just assume it's nothing that I need.

The --key option allows clients to specify the ORBit2 name
server's corbaloc with the shorter key.  Without this option the
own corbaloc generated by the ORBit2 name server contains a long
hexadecimal name in the end.

> Registering the IOR (or other identifier) of the corba name
> service was exactly what I had in mind.

To me, it was sufficient to register just the name server's host
name and port number because other parts of the
orbit-name-server-2 corbaloc are known in advance:

  corbaloc:iiop:1 2 HOSTNAME:PORT/NameService

> The only problem was that the length of the IOR exceeded the
> maximum length of an mdns attribute. It could be solved with a
> dirty hack or two, but I find it important to follow the mdns
> standard too.

With the above --key patch only the host name and the port number
need to be registered with the multicast service.

> I just had a quick look at the SLP RFCs and it seems that mdns is a
> little simpler, but otherwise the seem pretty much the same. Is there
> anything specific you wonder about mdns?

I can only assume that mdns is mimicking DNS formats and
protocols.  In my case it was too complex as I needed only to
resolve a certain service name into its host name and port number.
I guess mdns gives more options and extensions based on the DNS
protocol.

-- 
Ilguiz Latypov

programmer at DiskStream
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada