alfred - html man page (v2025.2-1-g16a7397)

SYNOPSIS

       alfred [options]

DESCRIPTION

       alfred is a user space daemon for distributing arbitrary local informa-
       tion over the mesh/network in a decentralized fashion. This data can be
       anything which appears to be useful - originally designed to replace
       the batman-adv visualization (vis), you may distribute hostnames, phone
       books, administration information, DNS information, the local weather
       forecast ...

       alfred runs as daemon in the background of the system. A user may in-
       sert information by using the alfred binary on the command line, or use
       special programs to communicate with alfred (done via unix sockets).
       alfred then takes care of distributing the local information to other
       alfred servers on other nodes. This is done via IPv6 link-local multi-
       cast, and does not require any configuration. A user can request data
       from alfred, and will receive the information available from all alfred
       servers in the network.

OPTIONS

       -v, --version
              Print the version

       -h, --help
              Display a brief help message.

       -u, --unix-path path
              path to unix socket used for client-server communication.

CLIENT OPTIONS

       -s, --set-data data-type
              Sets new data to distribute from stdin for the supplied data
              type (0-255).

              Note that 0 - 63 are reserved (please send an e-mail to the au-
              thors if you want to register a datatype), and can not be used
              on the commandline. Information must be periodically written
              again to alfred, otherwise it will timeout and alfred will for-
              get about it (after 10 minutes).

       -r, --request data-type
              Collect data from the network and print on stdout

       -d, --verbose
              Show extra information in the data output

       -d, --force
              Start server even when batman-adv or interface(s) are not yet
              available.

       -V, --req-version version
              Specify the data version set for -s

              Skipping the parameter entirely has the same effect as setting
              the parameter to 0 ('-V 0').

       -M, --modeswitch mode
              primary
                  Switch daemon to mode primary
              secondary
                  Switch daemon to mode secondary

       -I, --change-interface interface
              Change the alfred server to use the new interface(s)

       -B, --change-bat-iface interface
              Change the alfred server to use the new batman-adv interface

       -S, --server-status
              Request server status information such as mode & interfaces

       -E, --event-monitor
              Start alfred event monitor connecting to the alfred server and
              reporting update events

SERVER OPTIONS

       -i, --interface iface
              Specify the interface (or comma separated list of interfaces) to
              listen on.  Use 'none' to disable interface operations.

       -b batmanif
              Specify the batman-adv interface configured on the system (de-
              fault: bat0).  Use 'none' to disable the batman-adv based best
              server selection.

              The interface option -i is optional. If interface 'none' is
              specified, the alfred daemon will not communicate with other al-
              fred instances on the network unless the interface list is modi-
              fied at runtime via the unix socket.  The -b option is optional,
              and only needed if you run alfred on a batman-adv interface not
              called bat0, or if you don't use batman-adv at all (use '-b
              none'). In this case, alfred will still work but will not be
              able to find the best next primary server based on metrics.

       -m, --primary
              Start up the daemon in primary mode, which accepts data from
              secondaries and syncs it with other primaries.

              alfred servers may either run as primary or secondary in the
              network. Primaries will announce their status via broadcast, so
              that secondaries can find them.  Secondaries will then send
              their data to their nearest primary (based on TQ).  Primaries
              will exchange their data (which they have received from secon-
              daries or got on their own) with other primaries. By using pri-
              maries and secondaries, overhead can be reduced while still
              keeping redundancy (by having multiple primaries). Obviously, at
              least one primary must be present in the network to let any data
              exchange happen. Also having all nodes in primary mode is possi-
              ble (for maximum decentrality and overhead).

       -c, --update-command command
              Specify command to execute on data change. It will be called
              with data-type list as arguments.

       -p, --sync-period period
              Specify alfred synchronization period, in seconds. If not speci-
              fied, the default ALFRED_INTERVAL setting of 10 seconds will be
              used. Fractional seconds are supported.

       -4 group-address
              Specify the IPv4 multicast group address and enable IPv4 data-
              sharing (disabling IPv6 communication). This option is required
              on systems that do not support IPv6 addressing.

EXAMPLES

       Start an alfred server listening on bridge br0 (assuming that this
       bridge includes the batman interface bat0):
            alfred -i br0 -m

       Send data to the alfred server and store it under id 65:
            cat /etc/hostname | alfred -s 65

       Retrieve all data stored as id 65 from all connected alfred servers:
            alfred -r 65
            { "fe:f1:00:00:01:01", "OpenWRT-node-1\x0a" },
            { "fe:f1:00:00:02:01", "OpenWRT-node-2\x0a" },
            { "fe:f1:00:00:03:01", "OpenWRT-node-3\x0a" },

SEE ALSO

       batadv-vis(8), batctl(8)

AUTHOR

       alfred was written by Simon Wunderlich <sw@simonwunderlich.de> and Sven
       Eckelmann <sven@open-mesh.com>.

       This manual page was written by Simon Wunderlich <sw@simonwunder-
       lich.de> and Sven Eckelmann <sven@open-mesh.com>.



Linux                            Sep 21, 2013                        ALFRED(8)