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cs_connect(3N)


cs_connect, cs_perror -- application interface to the Connection Server

Synopsis

cc [options] file -lnsl
#include <cs.h>

int cs_connect(const char *host, char *service, struct csopts *cs_opt, int *error);

void cs_perror(const char *string, int error);

Description

The library routines cs_connect and cs_perror provide an interface that network applications use to establish an authenticated TLI/XTI connection to a network service on host. The Connection Server interface shields the client application from details of connection establishment and authentication. Since cs_connect performs authentication on behalf of the client process, authentication is effectively automated. The way in which cs_connect accesses authentication schemes also allows the system administrator to use modular schemes that are interchangeable and can be administered on a per-service basis.

cs_connect communicates with the Connection Server daemon, which establishes a TLI/XTI connection on behalf of the client application and returns a file descriptor associated with the connection. The Connection Server uses the Network Selection mechanism to determine the transport provider needed to connect to the specified service and uses the Name-to-Address Mapping facility to obtain the address of the network service over that transport.

The arguments are defined as follows:


host
The name of the server machine that is supplying the service. This name can be any string acceptable to the Name-to-Address Mapping facility.

service
The name of the service with which the application wishes to communicate. To connect to a service via the NLPS server use the following syntax:
   listen:service_tag
where service_tag is the argument taken from the first field in _pmtab on the server machine.

cs_opt
To bind to a reserved port, or to make a special type of network selection, the csopts structure may be used. Since applications rarely need this functionality, this argument will typically be NULL. Network selection usually means restricting the choice of transport providers by name (where a transport provider name is specified in the first field of the /etc/netconfig file). The preferred method of selection is setting the NETPATH environment variable to a colon-separated list of transport provider names. To do such special types of network selection as restricting by network semantics, use csopts.

The csopts structure is defined in the header file /usr/include/cs.h as:

   struct csopts {
   	struct netconfig *nc_p;
   	int nd_opt;
   	struct netbuf *nb_p;
   };
The elements of this structure are as follows:

struct netconfig *nc_p
To restrict the networks which may be used in making a connection, the user may set the element nc_p to point to a netconfig structure. A network will be selected which matches with all the elements in the netconfig structure that have been filled in by the user (see netconfig(4bnu)). For example, if the user wants to use only TCP protocol networks, then nc_p->nc_proto should be set to ``tcp'' and all other elements should be set to zero or NULL. If the user does not want to restrict network selection, but does want to bind to a reserved port, nc_p should be set to
   (struct netconfig *)NULL
and the other members should be set as described below.

int nd_opt
To bind to a reserved port, the user should set this element to ND_SET_RESERVEDPORT.

struct netbuf *nb_p
To bind to a reserved port on a specific address, nd_opt should be set as described above and nb_p should be set to point to a netbuf structure. The buf field of the netbuf structure should point to a sockaddr structure. See sys/socket.h.

error
An int that is declared in the application that calls cs_connect and cs_perror. A pointer to error is passed to cs_connect and will be set to an error value. Calling cs_perror with the value of error will print out an appropriate error message.

string
The string that is to precede error messages.

The Connection Server establishes a connection by trying each visible transport provider in the order listed in /etc/netconfig. Users can choose the transport providers to be tried and the order in which they will be tried, by setting the NETPATH environment variable to a colon-separated list of transport provider names. (A transport provider name is specified in the first field of the /etc/netconfig file.)

cs_connect establishes communication with the Connection Server daemon via a named pipe and sends the hostname and service name as parameters. cs_connect also sends the value of the NETPATH environment variable, or a NULL value if NETPATH is not set. If the pointer to the csopts structure is not NULL, cs_connect will send the contents of the three member structures with the exception of the last two elements of struct netconfig (that is, nc_lookups and nc_nlookups).

The Connection Server daemon uses the Network Selection and Name-to-Address Mapping facilities to attempt to establish an authenticated connection to host for service over each available transport until a connection is established or connection establishment fails for every transport. Transport providers may be restricted by setting the NETPATH environment variable to a colon-separated list of transport provider names. See environ(5).

The Connection Server consults the /etc/iaf/serve.allow file for the list of authentication schemes acceptable to the client machine for service on host.

If an authenticated connection is established, the Connection Server returns a file descriptor associated with the connection. The application can then perform all TLI/XTI operations (t_snd(3xti), t_rcv(3xti), and so on) on the file descriptor.

cs_perror prints an error message on the standard error. The error message is derived from indexing a value referenced by error, which was set by cs_connect. The message is preceded by string and a colon.

Files


/etc/cs/auth
Connection Server authentication scheme file

/etc/iaf/serve.alias
database of network services and their aliases

/etc/iaf/serve.allow
database of allowable authentication schemes and network services

/etc/inet/hosts
Name-to-Address Mapping hosts file for TCP. For compatibility, /etc/inet/hosts is linked to /etc/hosts.

/etc/inet/services
Name-to-Address Mapping services file for TCP. For compatibility, /etc/inet/services is linked to /etc/services.

/etc/net/transport_name/hosts
Name-to-Address Mapping hosts file for transport_name

/etc/net/transport_name/services
Name-to-Address Mapping services file for transport_name

/etc/netconfig
Network Selection database file

/var/adm/log/cs.debug
Connection Server debug file

/var/adm/log/cs.log
Connection Server log file

/usr/lib/locale/locale/LC_MESSAGES/uxnsu

Return values

On success, cs_connect returns a file descriptor containing a positive integer. On failure, cs_connect returns -1.

On failure, cs_perror may report the following errors:


CS_NO_ERROR
No Error

CS_SYS_ERROR
System Error

CS_DIAL_ERROR
Dial error

CS_MALLOC
No Memory

CS_AUTH
Authentication scheme specified by server is not acceptable

CS_CONNECT
Connection to service failed

CS_INVOKE
Error in invoking authentication scheme

CS_SCHEME
Authentication scheme unsuccessful

CS_TRANSPORT
Could not obtain address of service over any transport

CS_PIPE
Could not create CS pipe

CS_FATTACH
Could not mount remote stream to CS pipe

CS_CONNLD
Could not push CONNLD

CS_FORK
Could not fork CS child request

CS_CHDIR
Could not chdir

CS_SETNETPATH
Host/service not found over available transport

CS_TOPEN
TLI/XTI failure: t_open failed

CS_TBIND
TLI/XTI failure: t_bind failed

CS_TCONNECT
TLI/XTI failure: t_connect failed

CS_TALLOC
TLI/XTI failure: t_alloc failed

CS_MAC
MAC check failure or Secure Device access denied

CS_DAC
DAC check failure or Secure Device access denied

CS_TIMEDOUT
Connection attempt timed out

CS_NETPRIV
Privileges not correct for requested network options

CS_NETOPTION
Netdir option incorrectly set in csopts struct

CS_NOTFOUND
Service not found in server's _pmtab

CS_LIDAUTH
Connection not permitted by LIDAUTH.map

References

cs(1Mbnu), dials(3N), reportscheme(1Mbnu)

Notices

Not all values stored in the csopts structure are sent to the Connection Server. In particular, the last two elements of nc_p, that is, nc_lookups and nc_nlookups, are not sent. See netconfig(4bnu).

The Connection Server daemon logs a message to /var/adm/log/cs.log on startup.

If it is invoked with the debug option (-d), the Connection Server daemon prints debug information to /var/adm/log/cs.debug:

/usr/sbin/cs -d

In order for network applications to use cs_connect, the following network components must be correctly administered:

Examples

A typical call to cs_connect is of the form:
   #include <cs.h>
   	. . .
   

int error=0; . . .

if ((fd = cs_connect("host", "service", (struct csopts *)NULL, &error)) < 0) { /* do error handling */ cs_perror("application specific string", error); exit(1); } /* continue with normal execution */ . . .


© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.4 - 25 April 2004