HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
AIF: OS Enhancements
by Donna Gracyk, Jeanne Elmer, Narinder Sandhu, and Joanne Gong
Commercial Systems Division
PRODUCT OVERVIEW
This version of the Architected Interface Facility: Operating System,
version A.05.00 (p/n 36374A), provides many enhanced interfaces. These
enhancements include changes to support POSIX as well as many enhancement
requests from AIF customers.
A large number of the changes to the Architected Interfaces are to
support the new Hierarchical File System (HFS). For each AIF that accepts
or returns a filename, new parameters or items have been added to support
HFS pathnames. Enhancements have also been made to the File, Accounting,
and Process AIFs to provide controlled access to some of the new security
and process management fields added for POSIX.
Applications that use the Architected Interfaces to retrieve file name
information (for example, list of files opened by a process) needs to be
updated with the new POSIX pathname items if the application user plans
to build files in the HFS. Old applications will continue to work, but if
an attempt is made to retrieve the filename of a HFS file using the old
MPE filename item, then a blank filename and a warning is returned.
A brief overview of these changes are described below.
Accounting Information - AIFACCTGGET/PUT
The accounting interfaces retrieve/set information for a specific user,
group, or account. These interfaces have been enhanced to retrieve
information from the new POSIX UID/GID databases for a particular user or
account. New items that have been added are:
* User ID (UID) for a specified user
* Group ID (GID) for a specified account
* Home directory for a user
* Initial logon program for a user
AIFCHANGELOGON
The AIFCHANGELOGON interface allows you to programmatically change the
logon environment. This interface has been updated to automatically
change the process' User ID (UID) information and Group ID (GID)
information to correspond with the target logon.
Device Information - AIFDEVICEGET/PUT
AIFDEVICEGET/PUT interfaces retrieve/set device characteristics for
devices. Two new items have been added to these interfaces:
* New item to return the I/O device class.
* New item to return the I/O device subclass.
Both items are retrievable by calling AIFDEVICEGET and verifiable by
calling AIFDEVICEPUT; they are not modifiable items.
File Global Information - AIFFILEGGET/PUT
The file global interfaces retrieve/set characteristics of a file (for
example, file creator, file creation date). Some of the changes include:
* New parameters and items to support HFS pathnames.
* New items to return file type and record type.
* New items to return POSIX related fields (link count, file owner,
new state change timestamp, security information).
* Two new items to return the number of extents and the number of
sectors used by a file.
File Local Information - AIFFILELGET/PUT
The file local interfaces retrieve/set file characteristics of a specific
file opened by a specific process. Some of the changes include:
* New items to support HFS pathnames
* Existing items updated to support the new byte stream files.
* New item to indicate if file was opened by UFID.
KSAM XL Interfaces - AIFKSMREAD, AIFKSMCREATE
The KSAM XL interfaces provide a mechanism for accessing a KSAM XL file
in COPY mode so that developers can develop software where fast copying
of the KSAM XL file is desired. The KSAM XL interfaces have been
enhanced to support copying a KSAM XL file to and from a HFS directory.
Process Information - AIFPROCGET/PUT
The process interfaces retrieve/set information for a specific process
(for example, program name, files opened by process, list of child PIDs,
and so on). Some of the enhancements include:
* New items to return the HFS pathnames and UFID information of all
files opened by a process.
* New items to return some POSIX process fields such as the process'
User ID (UID), group id (GID), and file mode creation mask
(CMASK).
* New items to return a list of ancestor PIDs and a list of sibling
PIDs
* New items to return three break fields, break request done, break
request cancel, and break request pending.
System Configuration Information - AIFSCGET/PUT
The AIFSCGET/PUT interfaces retrieve/set system configuration
information. Some of the enhancements include:
* New item to return maximum pathname size.
* New item to return maximum number of AIF ports.
* New items to return Default NM Stack, Maximum NM Stack, Default CM
Stack, Maximum CM Stack, Default Heap, and Maximum NM Heap.
* New items to return and modify the Logon prompt and User Version
ID.
Systemwide Information - AIFSYSWIDEGET
The AIFSYSWIDEGET interface allows you to retrieve a set of files,
processes, jobs/sessions, accounts, groups, users, or spoolfiles based on
a set of criteria specified by the user (for example, find all files in a
particular fileset with a particular filecode). Some of the enhancements
to this interface include:
* New items in file area of AIFSYSWIDEGET to support file type and
record type as search criteria.
* New parameter and items in file area to support files in the HFS.
* New item in process area of AIFSYSWIDEGET to allow program name as
a criterion.
AIFTIME
The AIFTIME interface converts ticks or microseconds to a meaningful time
such as date time, clock time, or a string format. New enhancements to
this interface now allow the caller to retrieve ticks and microseconds
since 1970. Therefore, this interface now can be used to obtain ticks or
microseconds which can then be converted to a time string. Microseconds
are widely used by the MPE/iX Operating System as timestamps in the file
label and Unique File Identifier.