Overview of the portmapper service

A portmapper functions as a directory of services and the ports on which those services are running. Processes can opt to register or not register their location with a portmapper. A common reason for not registering with a portmapper is security.

If a BMC Remedy AR System server is registered with a portmapper, your clients do not need to know what port the server is listening on because the clients can identify the port by using the portmapper and direct API calls to the appropriate TCP port. If a server is not registered with a portmapper, you must assign a TCP port number to that server. Otherwise, the system must search for an open port to communicate on each time the server is restarted. Your clients will not know where to find your AR System server because the port might be different if the AR System server is restarted.

Registering with a portmapper and assigning TCP port numbers are not mutually exclusive options. You can do both. If you specify a particular port for a server and register the server with a portmapper. Clients within the firewall do not need to be configured to access the specified port number.

If the AR System server is not registered with a portmapper:

• Client processes must be able to identify the port to communicate on to contact the server. For more information about configuring ports for the client, see Understanding port numbers.
• Macros that a Linux user tool runs as part of an escalation or filter run process cannot find the server. To fix this issue, register the server with a portmapper. You can also use the runmacro utility, which has a command-line port setting.
• The client/server interaction still requires the use of RPC when specific ports are used.

Windows and portmapper services

Because many Microsoft Windows environments do not have a portmapper service, one is provided with the AR System server. If you already have a portmapper, AR System registers with it if requested. If not, you can specify that the AR System Portmapper service needs to be started and used as the portmapper for the system.

No AR System Portmapper exists for Linux because all Linux operating systems include a portmapper as a standard feature.

Connecting to AR System at a specific TCP port

When using an API client on a Linux server, you can connect to the AR System at a specific TCP port by setting the AR TCP Port variable.

The following strategies require that all servers that the client uses be on the same port.

For the C shell, use the following commands to set ARTCPPORT:

setenv ARTCPPORT <TCPPortNumber> aruser &

For the Bourne shell, use the following commands to set ARTCPPORT:

ARTCPPORT=<TCPPortNumber>; export <ARTCPPORT> aruser & 

For an Developing an API program , you can set variables through a shell or from within the program.