RVDTAB(5) —

NAME

/etc/rvd/rvdtab − information about client Remote Virtual Disks (RVDs)

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The file /etc/rvd/rvdtab contains information that is used by the up, down, and rvdflush utilities to manipulate remote virtual disks. These utilities only read /etc/rvd/rvdtab; they do not write to it. The system administrator is responsible for maintaining the file.

The following is a typical /etc/rvd/rvdtab file:

∗vsusr0agamemnonr/urvd# default /usr
∗vsusr0andromacher/urvd# backup /usr
∗vssys1agamemnonr/srvd# default sys
∗vssys1andromacher/srvd# backup sys
%source2priamr/src# system sources
appdev3jasonr/usr/mac amyscam# macsyma disk
1484helenxr/mit/me/rdir# my locker

Each line in the file contains a single rvd pack entry. Each entry has this form:

{∗ | %} pack drive host modes dir [ passwd ] [ # comment ]

You can use spaces or tabs to separate the fields. Comments can be placed on lines by themselves, and you can have blank lines as well.

The pack field specifies the rvd’s pack name. This is the pack’s name on the rvd server.

The drive field tells the up utility which of the workstation’s virtual disk drives to use when spinning up the pack. Under the current configuration, each workstation has ten virtual disks, numbered 0 through 9.

The host field specifies the pack’s server host. Up, down, and rvdflush use this field to determine where to make spinup and spindown requests.

The modes field specifies the mode or modes in which the pack can be spun up. r specifies read-only mode; x specifies exclusive mode. If you list both modes in the mode field (see the seventh entry in the example above), up will by default spin up the disk in the first mode listed. Up has options that let you get around the default.

The dir field tells up where to mount the spun-up pack. This field must contain an absolute pathname of a directory, starting with the / character.

The optional passwd field (see line six in the example) is now obsolete. You should no longer specify pack passwords in the table. If a pack requires a password, the up command will prompt you for it. Up also has a −p option that lets you specify pack passwords in the up command line. This option should be used only by programmers writing shell scripts that invoke the up command. Public library packs, such as vssys and vsusr do not require passwords.

Entries may be flagged by a ∗ or % to indicate that they are “default” RVD packs (eg, up −d applies to them). The difference is ∗ indicates a required pack, and the user may specify that up(1) repeatedly attempt to spinup as many as possible in a round-robin fashion until all ∗ packs have been spun up or cannot be spun up because the target drive is already in use. Typical usage for the ∗ flag is to mark all /urvd and /srvd entries in /etc/rvd/rvdtab. The % flag marks an entry as a “default pack”, but should the spinup fail, no further attempts are made (“a desirable disk, but not ‘absolutely’ necessary”).

Note that the order of the file’s entries is important because up(1), down(1), and rvdflush(8) read /etc/rvd/rvdtab from top to bottom as they process disk packs. For instance, at boot time, when up attempts to spin up a vsusr rvd pack, the utility will try to spinup the first vsusr entry in the file. If the spinup fails, up will move to the next entry in the file and try to spinup that pack.

The proper way to read records from /etc/rvd/rvdtab is to use the library of routines written for up(1) and down(1).

FILES

/etc/rvd/rvdtabremote virtual disk table

BUGS

Flagging a pack with ∗ that requires a password will produce unrecoverable errors, particularly during reboot if /etc/rc.local calls up(1) to spinup any RVD disks.

PRPQs 5799-WZQ/5799-PFF: IBM/4.3 — July 1987

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