man8/knobd

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Name

knobd - assignable knob service daemon

Synopsis

knobd <argument list>

Description

This is the assignable knob server daemon.

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 to 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 KNOBconf.

--auto_init <time>
If the value is greater than zero then the knob system will be reinitialized using the value in seconds.

The minimum value which may be supplied is 10.

--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 kcmd(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 kcmd(8) program.

--log_wlock
If this argument is present information is logged to stderr each time a write lock is acquired or released.

This setting can also be changed by the kcmd(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 knobd accepts several single letter commands from stdin.

The commands are:

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

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

Notes


The listener socket uses port 6301 and is tcp class.

This may be overridden by placing an entry with the name KNOBserv in /etc/services, for example "KNOBserv 6301/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


ts(1)
m_crt(1)
kasn(1)
kasnrd(1)
kcmd(1)
mk_init(8)
mk_shutdown(8)
assignd(8)
meterd(8)
METERconf(5)

Manual page revision

$Id: knobd.8,v 1.4 2007/07/11 15:06:41 kitchen Exp $

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