Apple Mac OS X Server manual Managing Preference Files and the Configuration Daemon, Bonjour Name

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Bonjour Name

Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Bonjour uses industry-standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically discover each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers. Specifically, Bonjour enables automatic IP address assignment without a DHCP server, name-to-address translation without a DNS server, and service discovery without a directory server. Use the serversetup tool to view or change the Bonjour name.

To display the server’s Bonjour name:

$ serversetup -getBonjourname

To change the server’s Bonjour name:

$ sudo serversetup -setBonjourname bonjourname

The command displays 0 if the name was changed.

Note: If you use Server Admin to connect to a server using its Bonjour name, then to change the server’s Bonjour name, you will need to reconnect to the server the next time you open the Server Admin application.

Managing Preference Files and the Configuration Daemon

The various sets of configuration information that a user creates at different locations, whether in System Preferences or through the command line, are stored in the preference.plist file located in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/.

Network configuration is handled by configd, the configuration daemon. configd reads the network configuration and stores it with the current state of the computer’s networking information. This storage is in the form of key-value pairs. The key is a description of what is being stored, and the value is the actual value of the information being stored. You can view the values stored by configd at run time, and monitor them using the scutil tool. This can be especially valuable when you are trying to debug your network configuration from the command line.

Invoked with no options, scutil provides a command-line interface to the data that is maintained by configd. For a list of commands you can use with scutil, enter help at the scutil prompt.

To start a scutil session (interactive mode), perform the following:

$ scutil

> open

This opens a session with configd. Once the session is open, you can list all of the keys in data store for configd:

> list

Chapter 6 Setting Network Preferences