[Go to CFHT Home Page] Man Pages
Back to Software Index  BORDER=0Manpage Top Level
    fns_initial_context(5) manual page Table of Contents

Name

fns_initial_context - overview of the FNS Initial Context

Description

Every FNS name is interpreted relative to some context, and every FNS naming operation is performed on a context object. The FNS programming interface (XFN) provides a function that allows the client to obtain an Initial Context object. The Initial Context provides the initial pathway to other FNS contexts. FNS defines a set of bindings that the client can expect to find in this context,

FNS assumes that for every process:

    .
  1. There is a user associated with the process when fn_ctx_handle_from_initial() is invoked. This association is based on the effective uid of the process. In the following discussion this user is denoted by U. The association of user to process may change during the life of a process but does not affect the context handle originally returned by fn_ctx_handle_from_initial().
    2. .
  2. The process is running on a host when fn_ctx_handle_from_initial() is invoked. In the following discussion this host is denoted by H.

The following atomic names can appear in the Initial Context: ..., thishost, thisorgunit, thisens, myself, myorgunit, myens, orgunit, site, user and host. Except for ..., these names with an added underscore (’_’) prefix are also in the Initial Context and have the same binding as their counterpart (e.g. thishost and _thishost have the same binding). In addition, org has the same binding as orgunit, and thisuser has the same binding as myself. The bindings for these names are summarized in the following table.

Some of these names may not necessarily appear in all Initial Contexts. For example, a process owned by the super-user of a machine does not have any of the user-related bindings. Or, an installation that has not set up a site namespace will not have the site-related bindings.