Novell EDIRECTORY 8.8 SP3, Administration Manual, Page: 615 / 634

Configuring OpenSLP for eDirectory
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Configuring OpenSLP for
eDirectory
This appendix provides information for network administrators on the proper configuration of
OpenSLP for Novell
®
eDirectory
TM
installations without the Novell Client
TM
.
Š
Section C.1, “Service Location Protocol,” on page 615
Š
Section C.2, “SLP Fundamentals,” on page 615
Š
Section C.3, “Configuration Parameters,” on page 617
C.1 Service Location Protocol
OpenSLP is an open-source implementation of the IETF Service Location Protocol Version 2.0
standard, which is documented in
IETF Request-For-Comments (RFC) 2608 (http://www.ietf.org/
rfc/rfc2608.txt?number=2608) .
In addition to implementing the SLP v2 protocol, the interface provided by OpenSLP source code is
an implementation of another IETF standard for programmatically accessing SLP functionality,
documented in
RFC 2614 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2614.txt?number=2614) .
To fully understand the workings of SLP, we recommend that you read these two documents and
internalize them. They are not necessarily light reading, but they are essential to the proper
configuration of SLP on an intranet.
For more information on the OpenSLP project, see the OpenSLP (http://www.OpenSLP.org) Web
site and the SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/openslp) Web site. The OpenSLP Web site
provides several documents that contain valuable configuration tips. Many of these are incomplete
at the time of this writing.
C.2 SLP Fundamentals
Service Location Protocol specifies three components:
Š
The user agent (UA)
Š The service agent (SA)
Š
The directory agent (DA)
The user agent’s job is to provide a programmatic interface for clients to query for services, and for
services to advertise themselves. A user agent contacts a directory agent to query for registered
services of a specified service class and within a specified scope.
The service agent’s job is to provide persistent storage and maintenance points for local services that
have registered themselves with SLP. The service agent essentially maintains an in-memory
database of registered local services. In fact, a service cannot register with SLP unless a local SA is
present. Clients can discover services with only a UA library, but registration requires an SA,
primarily because an SA must reassert the existence of registered services periodically in order to
maintain the registration with listening directory agents.