[OLSR-users] RE: Dot topology plugin

[Andreas Tønnesen]

Hi,

> As you can imagine, I know little about the olsrd internal structures, and
> would like to stay like that as much as possible :-), so, besides the
> structures obviously used in the dot-draw plugin, are there any other
> structures that should be "streamed" to the clients connected to the
> plugin?.
>

You could provide information from close to all internal tables. But then
you are really in dager of duplicating the GUI<->olsrd interface, which
will be redesigned to do something like that in some time.

If you are just interested in topology, not in olsrd related matters(such
as MPR selections, registeres willingness, link quality etc.) providing
info from the TC and neighbor tables should  be sufficient.

> I plan to "stream" those structures in raw binary form with some basic
> additions (number of elements in a table and such).
>
> By the way, I think I asked you before about this, but just in case:
> currently, there is no mechanism to grab the olsrd internal state, right?
> (because if there is, making a plugin is pointless).
>

No, not really. But as stated above, the plugin interface should do this
in a couple of releases...

> Sure. I got olsrd for free and it's doing a great job for me. The least I
> can do is contribute to the extent of my capabilities.
>
> I think I'll make two versions: one non-threaded and another threaded. The
> non-threaded implementation is plain simple: instead of writing the DOT
> description, write the raw structures, and do an initial write upon a
> client
> connection. We should provide an option to allow non-local connection, and
> advise anyone using the plugin and a remote connection can, under some
> circumstances, block olsrd operation for an unbound amount of time and
> thus
> cause strange behaviour.

Sounds good. I'll try to implement functionallity to set plugin parameters
in the config file for the next release.

- Andreas

---------
Andreas Tønnesen
http://www.olsr.org