Overview of the NWAM Daemons

There are two daemons that are used by NWAM: the nwamd daemon and the netcfgd daemon. The policy engine daemon, nwamd, controls network autoconfiguration by functioning in multiple roles. The repository daemon, netcfgd, controls access to the network configuration repository.

Description of the NWAM Policy Engine Daemon (nwamd)

The nwamd daemon controls network autoconfiguration by assuming the following roles:

• Event Collector

  This role involves collecting link-related events that need to be detected through routing socket and sysevent registration. An example of how nwamd performs this task is that the daemon obtains an EC_DEV_ADD sysevent, which signifies that a NIC was hot-plugged into the system. All such events are packaged into the nwamd event structure and then sent to the event handling thread, which is responsible for that task.

• Event Handler

  This role involves running an event loop thread to respond to events of interest. The event handler operates on the state machines that are associated with the different objects that are managed by the NWAM service. In the course of handling events, the nwamd daemon detects changes in the network environment, which might trigger changes to a profile, or profiles, as a result.

• Event Dispatcher

  This role involves sending events to external consumers who have registered an interest in such events. Examples of event dispatching include wireless scan events that contain information about available WLANs, which is useful to the NWAM GUI. The GUI can, in turn, display the available options to the user.

• Profile Manager

  Management of these profiles by the nwamd daemon involves applying the network configuration, depending on the following information:

  • Which links and interfaces are activated

  • Characteristics of the connected networks

  • Contingencies and dependencies that are built into the enabled profiles

  • External events that are received

Description of the NWAM Repository Daemon (netcfgd)

The profile daemon, netcfgd, controls and manages access to a network configuration repository. The daemon is started automatically by the svc:/network/netcfg:default SMF service. The daemon ensures that any application that is attempting to read information from or write information to the repository has the following authorizations:

• solaris.network.autoconf.read

• solaris.network.autoconf.write

For more information about authorizations, see the auth_attr(4) man page. For more information about security profiles, see the prof_attr(4) man page.

For more information about the netcfgd daemon, see the netcfgd(1M) man page.