HP-UX Reference (11i v2 07/12) - 1 User Commands N-Z (vol 2)

p
pathalias(1) pathalias(1)
NAME
pathalias - electronic address router
SYNOPSIS
pathalias [-ivcDf][-l
host][-d link][-t link][files]
DESCRIPTION
pathalias computes the shortest paths and corresponding routes from one host (computer system) to all
other known, reachable hosts. pathalias reads host-to-host connectivity information on standard
input or in the named files, and writes a list of host-route pairs on the standard output.
Options
pathalias recognizes the following options and command-line arguments:
-i Ignore case: map all host names to lowercase. By default, case is significant.
-c Print costs. Print the path cost (see below) before each host-route pair.
-v Verbose. Report some statistics on the standard error output.
-D Terminal domains. Domain members are terminal.
-f First hop cost. The printed cost is the cost to the first relay in a path instead of the cost of
the path itself; implies (and overrides) the -c option.
-l host Set local host name to host. By default, pathalias discovers the local host name in a
system-dependent way.
-d link Declare a dead link, host, or network (see below). If link is of the form
host1!host2 ,
the link from host1 to host2 is treated as an extremely high cost (that is,
DEAD
) link. If
link is a single host name, that host is treated as dead and is used as an intermediate host
of last resort on any path. If link is a network name, the network requires a gateway.
-t link Trace input for link, host, or network on the standard error output. The form of link is as
above.
The public domain version of
pathalias includes two undocumented options that are briefly described
in the Special Options section below.
Input Format
A line beginning with white space continues the preceding line. Anything following # on an input line is
ignored.
A list of host-to-host connections consists of a "from" host in column 1, followed by white space, followed by
a comma-separated list of "to" hosts, called links. A link may be preceded or followed by a network charac-
ter to use in the route. Valid network characters are
! (default),
@, :, and %. A link (and network charac-
ter, if present) may be followed by a "cost" enclosed in parentheses. Costs can be arbitrary arithmetic
expressions involving numbers, parentheses,
+, -, *, and /. Negative costs are prohibited. The following
symbolic costs are recognized:
LOCAL 25 (local-area network connection)
DEDICATED 100 (high speed dedicated link)
DIRECT 200 (toll-free call)
DEMAND 300 (long-distance call)
HOURLY 500 (hourly poll)
EVENING 2000 (time restricted call)
DAILY 5000 (daily poll, also called POLLED)
WEEKLY 30000 (irregular poll)
In addition, DEAD is a very large number (effectively infinite), and HIGH and LOW are −5 and +5 respec-
tively, for baud-rate or quality bonuses/penalties, and FAST is −80, for adjusting costs of links that use
high-speed (9.6 Kbaud or more) modems. These symbolic costs represent an imperfect measure of
bandwidth, monetary cost, and frequency of connections. For most mail traffic, it is important to minimize
the number of hosts in a route, thus, for example, HOURLY is far greater than DAILY divided by 24. If
no cost is given, a default of 4000 is used.
For the most part, arithmetic expressions that mix symbolic constants other than HIGH, LOW, and FAST
make no sense. For example, if a host calls a local neighbor whenever there is work, and additionally polls
every evening, the cost is DIRECT, not DIRECT+EVENING.
138 Hewlett-Packard Company − 1 − HP-UX 11i Version 2: December 2007 Update