rpcbind Operation

rpcbind is contacted by way of an assigned address specific to the transport being used. For TCP/IP and UDP/IP, for example, it is port number 111. Each transport has such an assigned well known address. The following is a description of each of the procedures supported by rpcbind.

RPCBPROC_NULL

This procedure does no work. By convention, procedure zero of any program takes no parameters and returns no results.

RPCBPROC_SET

When a program first becomes available on a machine, it registers itself with the rpcbind program running on the same machine. The program passes its program number prog; version number vers; network identifier netid; and the universal address uaddr; on which it awaits service requests.

The procedure returns a Boolean response with the value TRUE if the procedure successfully established the mapping and FALSE otherwise. The procedure refuses to establish a mapping if one already exists for the ordered set (prog, vers, netid).

Note that neither netid nor uaddr can be NULL, and that netid should be a valid network identifier on the machine making the call.

RPCBPROC_UNSET

When a program becomes unavailable, it should unregister itself with the rpcbind program on the same machine.

The parameters and results have meanings identical to those of RPCBPROC_SET. The mapping of the (prog, vers, netid) tuple with uaddr is deleted.

If netid is NULL, all mappings specified by the ordered set (prog, vers, *) and the corresponding universal addresses are deleted. Only the owner of the service or the super-user is allowed to unset a service.

RPCBPROC_GETADDR

Given a program number prog, version number vers, and network identifier netid, this procedure returns the universal address on which the program is awaiting call requests.

The netid field of the argument is ignored and the netid is inferred from the netid of the transport on which the request came in.

RPCBPROC_DUMP

This procedure lists all entries in rpcbind's database.

The procedure takes no parameters and returns a list of program, version, netid, and universal addresses. Call this procedure using a stream rather than a datagram transport to avoid the return of a large amount of data.

RPCBPROC_CALLIT

This procedure allows a caller to call another remote procedure on the same machine without knowing the remote procedure's universal address. It is intended for supporting broadcasts to arbitrary remote programs via rpcbind's universal address.

The parameters prog, vers, proc, and the args_ptr are the program number, version number, procedure number, and parameters of the remote procedure.

This procedure sends a response only if the procedure was successfully executed, and is silent (no response) otherwise.

The procedure returns the remote program's universal address, and the results of the remote procedure.

RPCBPROC_GETTIME

This procedure returns the local time on its own machine in seconds since midnight of January 1, 1970.

RPCBPROC_UADDR2TADDR

This procedure converts universal addresses to transport (netbuf) addresses. RPCBPROC_UADDR2TADDR is equivalent to uaddr2taddr(). See thenetdir(3NSL) man page. Only processes that cannot link to the name-to-address library modules should use RPCBPROC_UADDR2TADDR.

RPCBPROC_TADDR2UADDR

This procedure converts transport (netbuf) addresses to universal addresses. RPCBPROC_TADDR2UADDR is equivalent to taddr2uaddr(). See thenetdir(3NSL) man page. Only processes that can not link to the name-to-address library modules should use RPCBPROC_TADDR2UADDR.