Higher Level Conventions

Within Bacula, we have established the convention that any time a single record is passed, it is sent with bnet_send() and read with bnet_recv(). Thus the normal exchange between the server (S) and the client (C) are:

S: wait for connection            C: attempt connection
S: accept connection              C: bnet_send() send request
S: bnet_recv() wait for request
S: act on request
S: bnet_send() send ack            C: bnet_recv() wait for ack

Thus a single command is sent, acted upon by the server, and then acknowledged.

In certain cases, such as the transfer of the data for a file, all the information or data cannot be sent in a single packet. In this case, the convention is that the client will send a command to the server, who knows that more than one packet will be returned. In this case, the server will enter a loop:

while ((n=bnet_recv(bsock)) > 0) {
   act on request
}
if (n < 0)
   error

The client will perform the following:

bnet_send(bsock);
bnet_send(bsock);
...
bnet_sig(bsock, BNET_EOD);

Thus the client will send multiple packets and signal to the server when all the packets have been sent by sending a zero length record.