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rpc.statd(8)

NAME

     rpc.statd -- host status monitoring daemon

SYNOPSIS

     rpc.statd [-d]

DESCRIPTION

     The rpc.statd utility is a daemon which co-operates with rpc.statd dae-
     mons on other hosts to provide a status monitoring service.  The daemon
     accepts requests from programs running on the local host (typically,
     rpc.lockd(8), the NFS file locking daemon) to monitor the status of spec-
     ified hosts.  If a monitored host crashes and restarts, the remote daemon
     will notify the local daemon, which in turn will notify the local pro-
     gram(s) which requested the monitoring service.  Conversely, if this host
     crashes and re-starts, when the rpc.statd re-starts, it will notify all
     of the hosts which were being monitored at the time of the crash.

     The following option is available:

     -d      Cause debugging information to be written to syslog, recording
	     all RPC transactions to the daemon.  These messages are logged
	     with level LOG_DEBUG and facility LOG_DAEMON.  Error conditions
	     are logged irrespective of this option, using level LOG_ERR.

     The rpc.statd utility must NOT be invoked by inetd(8) because the proto-
     col assumes that the daemon will run from system start time.  Instead, it
     should be run from rc(8) after the network has been started.

FILES

     /var/db/statd.status	     non-volatile record of currently moni-
				     tored hosts.
     /usr/include/rpcsvc/sm_inter.x  RPC protocol specification used by local
				     applications to register monitoring
				     requests.

SEE ALSO

     syslog(3), rc(8), rpc.lockd(8)

BUGS

     There is no means for the daemon to tell when a monitored host has disap-
     peared permanently (e.g. catastrophic hardware failure), as opposed to
     transient failure of the host or an intermediate router.  At present, it
     will re-try notification attempts at frequent intervals for 10 minutes,
     then hourly, and finally gives up after 24 hours.

     The protocol requires that symmetric monitor requests are made to both
     the local and remote daemon in order to establish a monitored relation-
     ship.  This is convenient for the NFS locking protocol, but probably
     reduces the usefulness of the monitoring system for other applications.

     The current implementation uses more than 1Kbyte per monitored host in
     the status file (and also in VM).	This may be inefficient for NFS
     servers with large numbers of clients.

STANDARDS

     The implementation is based on the specification in X/Open CAE Specifica-
     tion C218, "Protocols for X/Open PC Interworking: XNFS, Issue 4", ISBN 1

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