Chapter 4 omniORB configuration and API

omniORB 4.0, and thus omniORBpy 2, has a wide range of parameters that can be configured. They can be set in the configuration file / Windows registry, as environment variables, or on the command line. A few parameters can be configured at run time. This chapter lists all the configuration parameters, and how they are used.

4.1 Setting parameters

When CORBA::ORB_init() is called, the value for each configuration parameter is searched for in the following order:

Command line arguments
Environment variables
Configuration file / Windows registry
Built-in defaults

4.1.1 Command line arguments

Command line arguments take the form `-ORBparameter', and usually expect another argument. An example is `-ORBtraceLevel 10'.

4.1.2 Environment variables

Environment variables consist of the parameter name prefixed with `ORB'. Using bash, for example

export ORBtraceLevel=10

4.1.3 Configuration file

The best way to understand the format of the configuration file is to look at the sample.cfg file in the omniORB distribution. Each parameter is set on a single line like

traceLevel = 10

Some parameters can have more than one value, in which case the parameter name may be specified more than once, or you can leave it out:

InitRef = NameService=corbaname::host1.example.com
        = InterfaceRepository=corbaloc::host2.example.com:1234/IfR

: Note how command line arguments and environment variables prefix parameter names with `-ORB' and `ORB' respectively, but the configuration file and the extra argument to ORB_init() do not use a prefix.

4.1.4 Windows registry

On Windows, configuration parameters can be stored in the registry, under the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\omniORB.

The file sample.reg shows the settings that can be made. It can be edited and then imported into regedit.

4.2 Tracing options

The following options control debugging trace output.

traceLevel default = 1

omniORB can output tracing and diagnostic messages to the standard error stream. The following levels are defined:


level 0	critical errors only
level 1	informational messages only
level 2	configuration information and warnings
level 5	notifications when server threads are created and communication endpoints are shutdown
level 10	execution and exception traces
level 25	trace each send or receive of a giop message
level 30	dump up to 128 bytes of each giop message
level 40	dump complete contents of each giop message

The trace level is cumulative, so at level 40, all trace messages are output.

traceExceptions    default = 0

If the traceExceptions parameter is set true, all system exceptions are logged as they are thrown, along with details about where the exception is thrown from. This parameter is enabled by default if the traceLevel is set to 10 or more.

traceInvocations    default = 0

If the traceInvocations parameter is set true, all local and remote invocations are logged, in addition to any logging that may have been selected with traceLevel.

traceThreadId    default = 0

If traceThreadId is set true, all trace messages are prefixed with the id of the thread outputting the message. This can be handy for tracking down race conditions, but it adds significant overhead to the logging function so it is turned off by default.

4.2.1 Tracing API

The three tracing parameters can be inspected or modified at runtime with the traceLevel(), traceInvocations() and traceThreadId() functions in the omniORB module. Calling one of the functions with no arguments returns the current value; calling it with a single integer argument sets the value.

4.3 Miscellaneous global options

These options control miscellaneous features that affect the whole ORB runtime.

dumpConfiguration    default = 0

If set true, the ORB dumps the values of all configuration parameters at start-up.

scanGranularity    default = 5

As explained in chapter 749Connection and Thread Managementchapter.7, omniORB regularly scans incoming and outgoing connections, so it can close unused ones. This value is the granularity in seconds at which the ORB performs its scans. A value of zero turns off the scanning altogether.

nativeCharCodeSet    default = ISO-8859-1

The native code set the application is using for char and string. See chapter 859Code set conversionchapter.8.

omniORB_27_CompatibleAnyExtraction    default = 0

In omniORB 2.7 and earlier, the Any extraction operators for strings and object references returned a copy/duplicate of the value stored in the Any, meaning the caller had to release the extracted value. The C++ mapping was clarified to state that the Any retains ownership of the returned value, so the caller does not need to release it. To aid the transition for ancient programs from omniORB 2.7 or earlier, setting this flag to true selects the old copying behaviour.

abortOnInternalError    default = 0

If this is set true, internal fatal errors will abort immediately, rather than throwing the omniORB::fatalException exception. This can be helpful for tracking down bugs, since it leaves the call stack intact.

4.4 Client side options

These options control aspects of client-side behaviour.

InitRef    default = none

Specify the objects available from ORB::resolve_initial_references(). The arguments take the form <key>=<uri>, where the key is the name given to resolve_initial_references() and uri is a valid CORBA object reference URI, as detailed in chapter 641Interoperable Naming Servicechapter.6.

DefaultInitRef    default = none

Specify the default URI prefix for resolve_initial_references(), as explained in chapter 641Interoperable Naming Servicechapter.6.

clientTransportRule    default = * unix,tcp,ssl

Used to specify the way the client contacts a server, depending on the server's address. See section 7.7.155Client transport rulessubsection.7.7.1 for details.

clientCallTimeOutPeriod    default = 0

Call timeout in milliseconds for the client side. If a call takes longer than the specified number of milliseconds, the ORB closes the connection and raises a COMM_FAILURE exception. A value of zero means no timeout; calls can block for ever. See section 7.3.151Client side timeoutssubsection.7.3.1 for more information about timeouts.

Note: omniORB 3 had timeouts specified in seconds; omniORB 4.0 uses milliseconds for timeouts.

supportPerThreadTimeOut    default = 0

If this parameter is set true, timeouts can be set on a per thread basis, as well as globally and per object. Checking per-thread storage has a noticeable performance impact, so it is turned off by default.

outConScanPeriod    default = 120

Idle timeout in seconds for outgoing (i.e. client initiated) connections. If a connection has been idle for this amount of time, the ORB closes it. See section 7.553Idle connection shutdownsection.7.5.

maxGIOPConnectionPerServer    default = 5

The maximum number of concurrent connections the ORB will open to a single server. If multiple threads on the client call the same server, the ORB opens additional connections to the server, up to the maximum specified by this parameter. If the maximum is reached, threads are blocked until a connection becomes free for them to use.

oneCallPerConnection    default = 1

When this parameter is set to true (the default), the ORB will only send a single call on a connection at a time. If multiple client threads invoke on the same server, multiple connections are opened, up to the limit specified by maxGIOPConnectionPerServer. With this parameter set to false, the ORB will allow concurrent calls on a single connection. This saves connection resources, but requires slightly more management work for both client and server. Some server-side ORBs (including omniORB versions before 4.0) serialise all calls on a single connection.

offerBiDirectionalGIOP    default = 0

If set true, the client will indicate to servers that it is willing to accept callbacks on client-initiated connections using bidirectional GIOP, provided the relevant POA policies are set. See section 7.856Bidirectional GIOPsection.7.8.

diiThrowsSysExceptions    default = 0

If this is true, DII functions throw system exceptions; if it is false, system exceptions that occur are passed through the Environment object.

verifyObjectExistsAndType    default = 1

By default, omniORB uses the GIOP LOCATE_REQUEST message to verify the existence of an object prior to the first invocation. In the case that the full type of the object is not known, it instead calls the _is_a() operation to check the object's type. Some ORBs have bugs that mean one or other of these operations fail. Setting this parameter false prevents omniORB from making these calls.

giopTargetAddressMode    default = 0

GIOP 1.2 supports three addressing modes for contacting objects. This parameter selects the mode that omniORB uses. A value of 0 means GIOP::KeyAddr; 1 means GIOP::ProfileAddr; 2 means GIOP::ReferenceAddr.

bootstrapAgentHostname    default = none

If set, this parameter indicates the hostname to use for look-ups using the obsolete Sun bootstrap agent. This mechanism is superseded by the interoperable naming service.

bootstrapAgentPort    default = 900

The port number for the obsolete Sun bootstrap agent.

principal    default = none

GIOP 1.0 and 1.1 have a request header field named `principal', which contains a sequence of octets. It was never defined what it should mean, and its use is now deprecated; GIOP 1.2 has no such field. Some systems (e.g. Gnome) use the principal field as a primitive authentication scheme. This parameter sets the data omniORB uses in the principal field. The default is an empty sequence.

4.5 Server side options

These parameters affect server-side operations.

endPoint             default = giop:tcp::
endPointNoListen
endPointNoPublish
endPointPublishAllIFs
These options determine the end-points the ORB should listen on, and the details that should be published in IORs. See chapter 749Connection and Thread Managementchapter.7 for details.

serverTransportRule    default = * unix,tcp,ssl

Configure the rules about whether a server should accept an incoming connection from a client. See section ?? for details.

serverCallTimeOutPeriod    default = 0

This timeout is used to catch the situation that the server starts receiving a request, but the end of the request never comes. If a calls takes longer than the specified number of milliseconds to arrive, the ORB shuts the connection. A value of zero means never timeout.

inConScanPeriod    default = 180

Idle timeout in seconds for incoming. If a connection has been idle for this amount of time, the ORB closes it. See section 7.553Idle connection shutdownsection.7.5.

threadPerConnectionPolicy    default = 1

If true (the default), the ORB dedicates one server thread to each incoming connection. Setting it false means the server should use a thread pool.

maxServerThreadPerConnection    default = 100

If the client multiplexes several concurrent requests on a single connection, omniORB uses extra threads to service them. This parameter specifies the maximum number of threads that are allowed to service a single connection at any one time.

maxServerThreadPoolSize    default = 100

The maximum number of threads the server will allocate to do various tasks, including dispatching calls in the thread pool mode. This number does not include threads dispatched under the thread per connection server mode.

threadPerConnectionUpperLimit    default = 10000

If the threadPerConnectionPolicy parameter is true, the ORB can automatically transition to thread pool mode if too many connections arrive. This parameter sets the number of connections at which thread pooling is started. The default of 10000 is designed to mean that it never happens.

threadPerConnectionLowerLimit    default = 9000

If thread pooling was started because the number of connections hit the upper limit, this parameter determines when thread per connection should start again.

threadPoolWatchConnection    default = 1

If true, threads from the pool temporarily behave a bit like thread per connection after dispatching a call. See section 7.4.252Thread pool modesubsection.7.4.2 for details.

acceptBiDirectionalGIOP    default = 0

Determines whether a server will ever accept clients' offers of bidirectional GIOP connections. See section 7.856Bidirectional GIOPsection.7.8.

unixTransportDirectory    default = /tmp/omni-%u

(Unix platforms only). Selects the location used to store Unix domain sockets. The `%u' is expanded to the user name.

unixTransportPermission    default = 0777

(Unix platforms only). Determines the octal permission bits for Unix domain sockets. By default, all users can connect to a server, just as with TCP.

supportCurrent    default = 1

omniORB 4.0 supports the PortableServer::Current interface that provides thread context information to a servant. Supporting current has a small but noticeable run-time overhead due to accessing thread specific storage, so this option allows it to be turned off.

objectTableSize    default = 0

Hash table size of the Active Object Map. If this is zero, the ORB uses a dynamically resized open hash table. This is normally the best option, but it leads to less predictable performance since any operation which adds or removes a table entry may trigger a resize. If set to a non-zero value, the hash table has the specified number of entries, and is never resized. Note that the hash table is open, so this does not limit the number of active objects, just how efficiently they can be located.

poaHoldRequestTimeout    default = 0

If a POA is put in the HOLDING state, calls to it will be timed out after the specified number of milliseconds, by raising a TRANSIENT exception. Zero means no timeout.

supportBootstrapAgent    default = 0

If set true, servers support the Sun bootstrap agent protocol.

4.6 GIOP and interoperability options

These options control omniORB's use of GIOP, and cover some areas where omniORB can work around buggy behaviour by other ORBs.

maxGIOPVerson    default = 1.2

Choose the maximum GIOP version the ORB should support. Valid values are 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2.

giopMaxMsgSize    default = 2097152

The largest message, in bytes, that the ORB will send or receive, to avoid resource starvation. If the limit is exceeded, a MARSHAL exception is thrown. The size must be >= 8192.

strictIIOP    default = 1

If true, be strict about interpretation of the IIOP specification; if false, permit some buggy behaviour to pass.

lcdMode    default = 0

If true, select `Lowest Common Denominator' mode. This disables various IIOP and GIOP features that are known to cause problems with some ORBs.

tcAliasExpand    default = 0

This flag is used to indicate whether TypeCodes associated with Anys should have aliases removed. This functionality is included because some ORBs will not recognise an Any containing a TypeCode with aliases to be the same as the actual type contained in the Any. Note that omniORB will always remove top-level aliases, but will not remove aliases from TypeCodes that are members of other TypeCodes (e.g. TypeCodes for members of structs etc.), unless tcAliasExpand is set to 1. There is a performance penalty when inserting into an Any if tcAliasExpand is set to 1.

useTypeCodeIndirections    default = 1

TypeCode Indirections reduce the size of marshalled TypeCodes, and are essential for recursive types, but some ORBs do not support them. Setting this flag to false prevents the use of indirections (and, therefore, recursive TypeCodes).

acceptMisalignedTcIndirections    default = 0

If true, try to fix a mis-aligned indirection in a typecode. This is used to work around a bug in some versions of Visibroker's Java ORB.

4.7 System Exception Handlers

By default, all system exceptions that are raised during an operation invocation, with the exception of some cases of CORBA.TRANSIENT, are propagated to the application code. Some applications may prefer to trap these exceptions within the proxy objects so that the application logic does not have to deal with the error condition. For example, when a CORBA.COMM_FAILURE is received, an application may just want to retry the invocation until it finally succeeds. This approach is useful for objects that are persistent and have idempotent operations.

omniORBpy provides a set of functions to install exception handlers. Once they are installed, proxy objects will call these handlers when the associated system exceptions are raised by the ORB runtime. Handlers can be installed for CORBA.TRANSIENT, CORBA.COMM_FAILURE and CORBA.SystemException. This last handler covers all system exceptions other than the two covered by the first two handlers. An exception handler can be installed for individual proxy objects, or it can be installed for all proxy objects in the address space.

4.7.1 Minor codes

A new feature in omniORB 4.0 is extensive use of exception minor codes to indicate the specific circumstances surrounding a system exception. The C++ file include/omniORB4/minorCode.h contains definitions of all the minor codes used in omniORB, covering codes allocated in the CORBA specification, and ones specific to omniORB. In compilers with namespace support, the minor code constants appear in namespace omni; otherwise they are in the global scope.

Applications can use minor codes to adjust their behaviour according to the condition. You can receive a string format of a minor code by calling the omniORB.minorCodeToString() function, passing an exception object as its argument.

4.7.2 CORBA::TRANSIENT handlers

TRANSIENT exceptions can occur in many circumstances. One circumstance is as follows:

The client invokes on an object reference.
The object replies with a LOCATION_FORWARD message.
The client caches the new location and retries to the new location.
Time passes...
The client tries to invoke on the object again, using the cached, forwarded location.
The attempt to contact the object fails.
The ORB runtime resets the location cache and throws a TRANSIENT exception with minor code TRANSIENT_FailedOnForwarded.

In this situation, the default TRANSIENT exception handler retries the call, using the object's original location. If the retry results in another LOCATION_FORWARD, to the same or a different location, and that forwarded location fails immediately, the TRANSIENT exception will occur again, and the pattern will repeat. With repeated exceptions, the handler starts adding delays before retries, with exponential back-off.

In all other circumstances, the default TRANSIENT handler just passes the exception on to the caller.

You can override the default behaviour by installing your own exception handler. The function to call has signature:

omniORB.installTransientExceptionHandler(cookie, function [, object])

The arguments are a cookie, which is any Python object, a call-back function, and optionally an object reference. If the object reference is present, the exception handler is installed for just that object; otherwise the handler is installed for all objects with no handler of their own.

The call-back function must have the signature

function(cookie, retries, exc) -> boolean

When a TRANSIENT exception occurs, the function is called, passing the cookie object, a count of how many times the operation has been retried, and the TRANSIENT exception object itself. If the function returns true, the operation is retried; if it returns false, the TRANSIENT exception is raised in the application.

4.7.3 CORBA.COMM_FAILURE and CORBA.SystemException

There are two other functions for registering exception handlers: one for CORBA.COMM_FAILURE, and one for all other exceptions. For both these cases, the default is for there to be no handler, so exceptions are propagated to the application.

omniORB.installCommFailureExceptionHandler(cookie, function [, object])
omniORB.installSystemExceptionHandler(cookie, function [, object])

In both cases, the call-back function has the same signature as for TRANSIENT handlers.

4.8 Location forwarding

Any CORBA operation invocation can return a LOCATION_FORWARD message to the caller, indicating that it should retry the invocation on a new object reference. The standard allows ServantManagers to trigger LOCATION_FORWARDs by raising the PortableServer.ForwardRequest exception, but it does not provide a similar mechanism for normal servants. omniORB provides the omniORB.LOCATION_FORWARD exception for this purpose. It can be thrown by any operation implementation.

4.9 Dynamic importing of IDL

omniORBpy is usually used with pre-generated stubs. Since Python is a dynamic language, however, it is possible to compile and import new stubs at run-time.

Dynamic importing is achieved with omniORB.importIDL() and omniORB.importIDLString(). Their signatures are:

importIDL(filename [, args ]) -> tuple
importIDLString(string [, args ]) -> tuple

The first function compiles and imports the specified file; the second takes a string containing the IDL definitions. The functions work by forking omniidl and importing its output; they both take an optional argument containing a list of strings which are used as arguments for omniidl. For example, the following command runs omniidl with an include path set:

m = omniORB.importIDL("test.idl", ["-I/my/include/path"])

Instead of specifying omniidl arguments on each import, you can set the arguments to be used for all calls using the omniORB.omniidlArguments() function.

Both import functions return a tuple containing the names of the Python modules that have been imported. The modules themselves can be accessed through sys.modules. For example:

// test.idl
const string s = "Hello";
module M1 {
  module M2 {
    const long l = 42;
  };
};
module M3 {
  const short s = 5;
};

From Python:

>>> import sys, omniORB
>>> omniORB.importIDL("test.idl")
('M1', 'M1.M2', 'M3', '_GlobalIDL')
>>> sys.modules["M1.M2"].l
42
>>> sys.modules["M3"].s
5
>>> sys.modules["_GlobalIDL"].s
'Hello'

Note that each time importIDL() or importIDLString() is called, the IDL definitions are compiled and imported into the associated Python declarations. The new declarations overwrite any old ones with the same names. This can cause confusing situations where different modules see different definitions of the same objects. Although the objects appear identical, they are not, and comparisons within applications and within omniORBpy unexpectedly fail. You should not use these functions in more than one module to import the same IDL files.

4.10 C++ API

omniORBpy has a C++ API that can be used by programs that embed Python in C++, or by C++ extension modules to Python. The API has functions to convert object references between their Python representation and their C++ representation. For extensions to omniORBpy itself, it has a mechanism for adding pseudo object types to omniORBpy.

The definitions used by the C++ API are in the omniORBpy.h header. An example of its use is in examples/embed/.

The API is accessed through a singleton structure containing function pointers. A pointer to the API struct is stored as a PyCObject in the _omnipy module with the name API. It can be accessed with code like:

PyObject*     omnipy = PyImport_ImportModule((char*)"_omnipy");
PyObject*     pyapi  = PyObject_GetAttrString(omnipy, (char*)"API");
omniORBpyAPI* api    = (omniORBpyAPI*)PyCObject_AsVoidPtr(pyapi);
Py_DECREF(pyapi);

The structure has this definition:

struct omniORBpyAPI {

  PyObject* (*cxxObjRefToPyObjRef)(const CORBA::Object_ptr cxx_obj,
       CORBA::Boolean hold_lock);
  // Convert a C++ object reference to a Python object reference.
  // If <hold_lock> is true, caller holds the Python interpreter lock.

  CORBA::Object_ptr (*pyObjRefToCxxObjRef)(PyObject* py_obj,
        CORBA::Boolean hold_lock);
  // Convert a Python object reference to a C++ object reference.
  // Raises BAD_PARAM if the Python object is not an object reference.
  // If <hold_lock> is true, caller holds the Python interpreter lock.