HP-UX Reference (11i v3 07/02) - 4 File Formats (vol 8)
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 Out-
bound 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 message 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 giving
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 pro-
cess 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 connection
when a spooler spools several files at a time. Setting a sufficiently high value
effectively leaves the connection permanently open.
HP-UX 11i Version 3: February 2007 − 1 − Hewlett-Packard Company 307