XPAUsers: Distinguishing Users

Summary

XPA normally distinguishes between users on a given host, but it is possible to send data to access points belonging to other users.

Description

A single XPA name service typically serves all users on a given machine. Two users can register the same XPA access points on the same machine without conflict, because the user's username is registered with each access point and, by default, programs such as xpaget and xpaset only process access points of the appropriate user. For example:

  XPA xpa1 gs 838e2f67:1262 eric
  XPA xpa2 gs 838e2f67:1266 eric
  XPA xpa1 gs 838e2f67:2523 john
  XPA xpa2 gs 838e2f67:2527 john
Here the users "eric" and "john" both have registered the access points xpa1 and xpa2. When either "john" or "eric" retrieves information from xpa1, they will process only the access point registered in their user name.

If you want to access another user's XPA access points on a single machine, use the -u [user] option on xpaset, xpaget, etc. For example, if eric executes:

  xpaget -u john xpa1
he will access John's xpa1 access point.Use "*" to access all users on a given machine:
  xpaget -u "*" xpa1
Note that the XPA Environment Variable XPA_NSUSERS can be used to specify the default list of users to process:
  setenv XPA_NSUSERS "eric,john"
will cause access points from both "eric" and "john" to be processed by default.

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Last updated: September 10, 2003