Key Commands

An actor is the unit of encapsulation of resources with regard to the ChorusOS microkernel. The special actor called C_INIT is dedicated to administrative commands. The commands contained within C_INIT can be accessed either locally in console mode or remotely from the host, using a remote shell as rsh. See "C_INIT Actor". For more information on rsh, see "Communicating with the Target Using rsh" .

Application actors can either be loaded at boot time, as described in the "ChorusOS Actors" in ChorusOS 5.0 Application Developer's Guide, or dynamically using the C_INIT loading facility. Dynamic loading of actors is also described in further detail in "Execution Environment of Actors and Processes" in ChorusOS 5.0 Application Developer's Guide.

The conf/sysadm.ini file, which is embedded in the system image, is used to specify system initialization commands. The file is read from the /image/sys_bank directory. Each entry of this file is a command to be executed by C_INIT during the microkernel boot. Typical operations in sysadm.ini are network configuration, device initialization and file system mount.

The sysadm.ini file is not accessed remotely at boot time but is included in the system image. Further information on how sysadm.ini is used at start-up is described in "System Start-up".

See also sysadm.ini(4CC) for more information.

C_INIT Actor

The C_INIT actor provides administrative commands for the following:

• file system management, such as partitioning a disk and mounting a file system. This is described in Chapter 3, Introduction to ChorusOS File System Administration.

• network configuration, such as defining IP addresses and initializing network interfaces. This is described in Part III.

• device management, such as binding a high level service (file system, networking, tty management) to an actual device driver. This is described in "Special Device Driver Files".

Here are the most frequently used C_INIT commands:

• mknod: defines special device files.

• mkdev: binds high level services to an instance of a device driver.

• mount, umount: mounts and unmounts file systems.

• arun: launches executables.

• ifconfig: defines IP addresses.

• route, rarp, netstat, ppp, ping: miscellaneous networking commands.

• memstat, chorusStat: prints system statistics.

• setenv, unsetenv, echo, help, sleep, reboot, shutdown: miscellaneous system commands.

• rshd, console, source: specifies the device from which commands can be accepted:

  • rshd: from a host through rsh.

  • console: from system console.

  • source: from a file.

See C_INIT(1M) for a complete description.

These commands are invoked at system start-up, described in the following section, and later during the life of the system. During the life of the system, the C_INIT actor executes commands from the system console, or from a remote host through rsh.

Communicating with the Target Using rsh

For the ChorusOS operating system, commands that would in conventional UNIX systems be run through a shell are in fact run through rsh. The rsh command executes a command on a remote host, passing its input and receiving its output. When the ChorusOS 5.0 operating system image including the rsh feature is booted on the target machine, the C_INIT actor interprets the commands sent from the host through rsh. (See the rshd man page on your host). To see the list of the options available, type:

% rsh target help

where target is the target name or IP address.

The following information is displayed by the C_INIT actor:

C_INIT ChorusOS 5.0.0- valid commands that deal with:

File Systems:
        mount [[-t nfs|ufs|msdosfs|pdevfs] host:pathname|special_file 
	[mount_point]]
        umount [-v|-F|-f|-a|-t nfs|ufs|msdosfs|pdevfs] [special_file]
        swapon [mount_point]

Actors:
        arun [-g rgid] [-S | -U] [-k] [-T] [-d] [-q]
	 [-D] [-Z] [-xip] path [args]
        akill [-s site] {-g rgid | [-c] pid }
        aps 
        umask [mode]
        ulimit [-HSafn] [limit]

Environment variables:
        setenv var value
        unsetenv var
        env 

Networks:
        route 
        netstat 
        ping host
        ifconfig 
        ifwait ifname [timeout, default infinite]
        rarp ethernet_interface_name
        pppd 
        pppclose device
        pppstop 
        ethIpcStackAttach [dtreepath]
        ftpd 
        tftpd

Devices:
        mknod name [b | c] major minor
        dtree 
        mkdev name unit [dtreepath]

This Target:
        reboot 
        restart 
        memstat 
         
This shell:
        echo string
        source filename
        sleep [time in seconds, default=1s]
        help 
        console 
        rshd 
         chorusStat 
        shutdown -i 0|1|2|3

For details of these commands, see C_INIT(1M).