Vantage-To-Vantage enables forwarding control of one or more resources connected to a Vantage host to another, networked Vantage host.
The Vantage-To-Vantage forwarding process is accomplished by the transfer_control program.
Transfer of control forwards the display of message dialogs and the contents of the Non-Event Display window from one Vantage host (the local host) to another Vantage host (the remote host). When transfer of control is executed, Message event and Message with Reply dialogs as well as NED output generated on the local host are forwarded and are displayed automatically on the remote host. The remote host has control of the forwarded messages including the ability to reply using the Message with Reply dialog.
Remote Vantage host names and IP addresses must be added to the /etc/hosts file on each host and each remote host name must be added to a file called users/vantage/data/vanhosts.bin on each host. Open a terminal window and use an editor of your choice to create or modify the files. Enter one remote Vantage host name per line of the vanhosts file. The local Vantage host should not appear in the vanhosts file.
The Transfer of control program is executed at the command line from a terminal window on the Vantage host to which the resources to be forwarded are physically connected. The Broker process must be running on the host to which control is being transferred. Run the transfer_control program with no arguments to see resources currently forwarded.
Command syntax for transfer_control is:
transfer_control [resource, group or rules file name] [Vantage host] [display name]
The resource/group name is any Vantage-defined resource or group that exists on the host.
Rules file name is a file containing transfer "rules". The file of rules must exist on the transferring host in the directory /opt/vantage/transfer_rules and must have the file extension .xfer (i.e., mon7am.xfer) The file format is the same as the transfer_control command syntax. The file extension should not be used when executing the transfer control program. To execute the program using the mon7am.xfer file type: transfer_control mon7am
Vantage host is the name of the host to which control is being transferred.
Display name is the name of the X display upon which Message event and Message with Reply dialogs should appear. The X display must be served by the host to which the messages have been forwarded. If the X display name is left blank, the "display of record" is resolved at execution time from an entry made in the Xfer.dir database. This entry is made as part of Vantage installation.
You can choose to have the host and X display resolved at the time of event detection based on rules set by the transfer_control program. If you want Vantage to resolve the host and display at which the message should appear, the Message event and Message with Reply event definitions must contain the words DEFAULT_HOST in the Message to Host control, and the words DEFAULT_DISPLAY in the On X Display control of the message definition dialog. If the message definition contains anything other than these values the transfer control will have no effect on where the message is displayed. See Message Definition and Message With Reply Definition for more details.
A transfer_control rules file might look like the following: (Text in () is not part of the file.)
mickey arnold arnold:0.0(Forward mickey to arnold on X display arnold:0.0)
donald predator commando:0.0(Forward donald to predator on X display commando:0.0)
minnie predator(Forward minnie to predator on predator's default display)
minnie(Return control of minnie to its local host)
To transfer control using the rules contained in the mon7am file type: transfer_control mon7am This command could be scheduled in cron to execute automatically at a specific time of day.
To transfer control back to the local host to which the resources are connected type: transfer_control [resource name]. The transfer rules file to return control to the local host should simply contain one resource name per line. The Message Manager section contains descriptions of Vantage generated messages pertaining to transfer of control.
See also The Message Manager and The Launch/Status Manager .
