REGISTRY(4) REGISTRY(4)
NAME
registry, regquery - registration of services dynamically
SYNOPSIS
ndb/registry [ -f dbfile ]
ndb/regquery [ -m mntpt ] [ -n ] [ attr value ] ...
DESCRIPTION
Registry is a file server that provides registration and
location of services by their attributes where services come
and go. It was originally intended to register Grid
resources but has much wider use. Registry serves 9P on its
standard input. That can be mounted in the local name space
(see below for an example), or served over a connection (eg,
via listen(1)). The conventional local mount point is
/mnt/registry, which is where registries(2) expects to find
the local registry by default. There can, however, be any
number of registries active, each supporting a different
group of users and services, in different authentication
domains.
Registry serves a one-level directory containing a few con-
trol files and one file per registered service. All the
files are text files with similar format: zero or more lines
of one or more words, separated by white space (blank or
tab). A word can be quoted, using single quotes in the
style of sh(1), allowing it to contain white space or repre-
sent the empty string ''. Within a quoted word, a single
quote character is represented by two adjacent ones. (In
programs, use String->quoted from string(2), or more simply
the %q string format of sys-print(2) to quote strings appro-
priately.)
The control files are:
new A text file that is opened and written to register a
new service. Opening new returns a file descriptor
to a new but anonymous service file. It must be
written to set its name and initial description. The
first write contains one or more words:
svcname [ attr value ]...
The first word, svcname, is the proposed service
name. The write returns an error if the name dupli-
cates any existing name. Otherwise, a new file
svcname will appear in the directory. The optional
attribute value pairs form the initial service
Page 1 Plan 9 (printed 11/22/24)
REGISTRY(4) REGISTRY(4)
description. The service is removed from the regis-
ter by default when the file is closed. To advertise
a service without having to hold open a file descrip-
tor, include an attr named persist with non-zero
value; the service will then remain registered until
explicitly removed (see below).
index A read-only text file containing a list of all the
currently-registered services, one per line. Each
line contains a sequence of words. The first word is
the service name and the remaining ones are paired:
attribute name then value.
find A text file which should be opened for reading and
writing. Each write provides a set of
attribute/value pairs that acts as a filter, select-
ing only those services that possess all the given
attributes with the given values; the value "*"
matches any value. Subsequent reads return a list of
services, in the same format as index, but listing
only the selected services. The selection is made
from those available at the time of the write. There
is a separate filter for each open instance of find,
so that several processes can set different filters
simultaneously. (Note that after the write, the file
offset must be set to zero using sys-seek(2) before
reading.)
event A read-only text file that can be used to detect when
changes are made to the registry. Reading from it
blocks until a change is made. At that point, the
read completes and returns a string with a newline
terminated decimal version number representing the
number of changes made to the registry, which matches
Qid.vers for the registry directory. Multiple
changes are coalesced into one report.
A service file created by new may be read by anyone, but may
be written only by its owner. Each write must contain a set
of attribute/value pairs, formatted as above, which adds new
attributes to the service description and changes the value
of existing attributes. The file remains until the service
is struck off the register. The owner of a service can
remove its registration at any time by removing the corre-
sponding service file (eg, using rm(1) or sys-remove(2)).
Typically, most services register themselves dynamically,
perhaps using their locations (eg, network address) as their
service names. (Registry itself does not interpret the
name.) The -f option causes registry to load initially a
set of static service descriptions from dbfile, which is in
attrdb(6) format. The database entry for each service
Page 2 Plan 9 (printed 11/22/24)
REGISTRY(4) REGISTRY(4)
contains the pair service=svcname, causing registry to make
an entry for the given svcname with attribute/value pairs
initialised from the rest of that database entry. For exam-
ple:
service=net!click!1234
description='snapshot service' auth=none
Static entries are regarded as persistent but can be removed
explicitly by the registry owner.
Regquery looks for services in the registry mounted at mntpt
(default: /mnt/registry) that match all the given
attribute/value pairs. It prints the resulting list of ser-
vices, one per line. If the -n option is given, regquery
prints only the service name(s); otherwise it prints the
service description as well. If no attributes are given on
the command line, regquery prompts for successive queries,
one per line, and prints each result.
EXAMPLE
Start a registry that appears at the standard location for
local registries, /mnt/registry:
mount {ndb/registry} /mnt/registry
Make that registry available to the network on authenticated
connections:
listen -v 'tcp!*!registry' {export /mnt/registry&}
SOURCE
/appl/cmd/ndb/registry.b
SEE ALSO
attrdb(2), registries(2)
BUGS
It is not currently possible to have two values with the
same attribute name in the same service description.
Page 3 Plan 9 (printed 11/22/24)