Introduction To DBS

 DART Bootstrap Services (dbs) is the first component of run-control for the DART data acquisi-
tion system, though it has potential usefulness as a tool in other applications.

dbs is an rlogin session multiplexer. It allows a user, running a single program, to start up any num-
ber of remote login sessions, feed shell commands to them, and collect the output from the sessions 
into one or more logfiles. From dbs, a user can issue commands to these rlogin sessions in one of 
two ways: either by issuing a dbs command with arguments indicating the session and the actual 
command, or by first attaching to a session and then issuing the command directly. In the latter 
case, a user is attached to the session interactively so it appears just like an rlogin session - dbs 
becomes transparent. When finished with this interactive mode, the user can escape back to dbs 
and attach to a different session if so desired. The basic commands allow for creating sessions on 
remote nodes, issuing commands within a session without attaching to it, attaching to a session, 
and stopping all processes within a session. The program can be driven by commands from a file. 

The DBS products consists of two parts, the dbs daemon, explained above and the dbs client 
which interfaces to the daemon, refered to as "dbsc". The bootstrap client communicates to the 
daemon in one of two modes: command mode or trans-parent (attached) mode. Commands issued in 
command mode are interpreted by the client and the daemon, while input and output in the transparent 
mode is passed between the client and the remote rlogin session with no interpretation. In this 
mode, output from the session is buffered in the daemon and optionally logged to a file. In 
transparent mode, the local terminal is placed in a "raw" mode so that the local terminal driver 
does not interpret control characters, etc. - they are passed on to the remote rlogin pseudo-terminal 
driver. Also, in this mode output from the remote session is copied to the local standard output. 
In other words, in transparent mode the daemon and client are "invisible" to the rlogin session 
except for one exception: if the escape character is typed in, the session is detached, the client 
and daemon switch over to command mode, and output from the rlogin session is once again buffered 
by the daemon. 

Supported Platforms
Daemon is supported on IRIX 5.3
Client is supported on IRIX 5.3

To Run
After the tar file has been unwound, read PN483 located in the document
area to learn how to setup the environment to run the daemon and
client. 

Product Dependencies
This version of dbs is v1_13 and  is run dependent on:
ftcl v2_13
tcl v7_3r
tclx v7_3br

This version is also dependent, for building, on products that are not
currently available. Recompiling is not possible now, in the future
we hope to release the necessary products.