Name

Synopsis

Description

It processes assign messages sent to it by other clients and attempts connection to the appropriate AccelNET database and parameter.

More than one database may be connected to at a time.

This program is written as a daemon and should NOT be started in the background.

Arguments

Argument processing is done using Unix long argument syntax.

The values of all of the parameters listed here (whether or not they were supplied on the command line) are printed on stderr when the program starts.

--dev <device>

The pathname of the device to open.

If this argument is not supplied the default is /dev/kbuss.

--conf <path>

The pathname of the configuration file.

If this argument is not supplied the default is METERconf.

--auto_init <time>

If the value is greater than zero then the meter system will be reinitialized using the value in seconds. The minimum value which may be supplied is: 10.

--tcp_size

default: not_set

This allows dbman’s transmit buffer size to be set.

It is a very old feature from the days when the default tcp buffer sizes were very small. It’s probably not going to ever be needed for anything.

--disp_dbname

If this argument is present the database name will be displayed on the top line of the LCD display.

This setting can also be changed by the mcmd(8) program.

--log_assign

If this argument is present information is logged to stderr each time an assignment is performed.

This setting can also be changed by the mcmd(8) program.

--no_daemon

if this argument is present the program doesn’t become a daemon. stdin and stdout are left open and several diagnostic cmds are available.

See the section "Diagnostic commands".

--help

print the help info and exit.

Diagnostic commands

When the --no_daemon flag is used meterd accepts several single letter commands from stdin.

The commands are:

A or a - print the address list of the meter hardware.
H or h - print the host list.
M or m - print the meter information.
D or d - print the meter DESCDISK record information.

This is a diagnostic capability and may require understanding of the internal operation of the program to be useful.

Notes

This may be overridden by placing an entry with the name METERserv in /etc/services, for example "METERserv 6300/tcp".

There has been quite a bit of trouble over the years with people shutting off the knob/meter box and not knowing how to recover from having blank displays which need to be reinitialized.

It has always been possible to recover using the mk_init(8) command and many times there has been an AccelNET menu entry to support this. However, this still has not been clearly understood by the users.

Now the program will reinitialize the displays whenever an assignment is performed and whenever the range buttons are pressed.

Hopefully this will be better.

See Also

Manual page revision

Table of Contents

• Name
• Synopsis
• Description
• Arguments
• Diagnostic commands
• Notes
• See Also
• Manual page revision