The Naming Service is often part of the bootstrapping process of other CORBA
programs. For this reason, if an instance of omniNames crashes (or the machine
on which it runs is rebooted), it is important that certain aspects of its
operation persist upon restarting. Firstly the root context of the Naming
Service should always be accessible through the same object reference. This
helps the ORB to implement the resolve_initial_references call by
allowing the object reference to be stored in a configuration file, for
example. Secondly, the naming graph with all its bindings should persist
between invocations.
To achieve this, omniNames generates a log file, to which it writes out an
entry every time a change is made to the naming graph. The directory in which
this log file is written can be specified with the OMNINAMES_LOGDIR
environment variable. When omniNames is restarted it uses the log file so that
it can regenerate the naming graph.
Periodically the log file is checkpointed, removing unnecessary operations from
the log file. The idle time between checkpoints can be set with the
OMNINAMES_ITBC environment variable. It defaults to 15 minutes.