Developing applications over IPX/SPX using TLI

Initializing SPX

The SPX driver's link to IPX is created and held together by the NetWare Protocol Stack Daemon (NPSD). If NPSD dies, the architecture that links IPX and SPX is destroyed; SPX then reports errors and drops all outbound data. Disconnect indications are generated to all local endpoints. Use the streams trace command, strace(ADM), to monitor errors.

The SPX driver is a STREAMS driver that you must link into the kernel. You must also install:

NPSD
IPX driver

NPSD must be running to enable the use of SPX. NPSD reads the NPSConfig file as it initializes. That file contains a flag that tells NPSD whether or not to activate SPX. The flag should be set to "active" so that NPSD activates SPX and links SPX to the stack. If NPSD is not running and the flag is not set to ``active'', the t_open call that opens SPX fails.

The SPX driver is accessed through two devices:

/dev/nspxd: the controlling node for NPSD
/dev/nspx: the node that applications open to access SPX

The daemon node, /dev/nspxd, has the same device number as /dev/nspx, except that the daemon node is minor device 0 and /dev/nspx is a clonable device. The daemon node is readable and writable only by root, but the application node (/dev/nspx) is readable and writable by all users.

There is no read/write interface for SPX.

The tunable parameters for SPX are in a file called spx_tune.h. These parameters are described in the Networking Guide .