epmd

[Gordon Beaton]

On 26 May 2000 13:23:52 GMT, Richard Barrett wrote:
> This arrangement is not what I'd expected. I had assumed that once 
> there was an instance of epmd in the system subsequent invocations of 
> erl would communicate with that epmd process rather than invoking 
> another. I'd also assumed the single epmd would report all of the 
> named erl process in the system.

This is in fact what happens when the subsequent erlang nodes are
running on the same host as the original one. One instance of epmd
runs on each host where erlang is running, and epmd doesn't terminate
when erlang does. Each epmd only knows about the erlang nodes local to
that host.

When erlang node "foo@REDACTED" wants to connect to erlang node
"gurka@REDACTED", it asks epmd on "anotherhost" for the port number
to "gurka".

/gordon

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