rstpd.8

   1 .TH RSTPCTL 8 "August 20, 2006" "" ""
   2 .SH NAME
   3 rstpd \- Daemon implementing Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol for Linux
   4 bridges.
   5 .SH SYNOPSIS
   6 .BR "rstpd [\-d] [\-v <level>]"
   7 .SH DESCRIPTION
   8 .B rstpd
   9 implements the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) on Linux
  10 bridges. When started, it merely monitors the ethernet bridges on the
  11 machine until instructed to run RSTP on any of them using
  12 .BR rstpctl .
  13 When run with the
  14 .BR "\-d"
  15 option, it runs in the foreground and outputs messages which are
  16 normally logged through syslog to standard output and standard
  17 error. With the
  18 .BR "\-v"
  19 option, the level of verbosity of the logs can be controlled.
  20 See
  21 .BR rstpctl (8)
  22 for more information on configuring RSTP.
  23
  24 .SH SPANNING TREE PROTOCOL
  25 Multiple ethernet bridges can work together to create even larger
  26 networks of ethernets using the IEEE 802.1d spanning tree
  27 protocol. This protocol is used for finding the shortest path between
  28 two ethernets, and for eliminating loops from the topology. As this
  29 protocol is a standard, linux bridges will interwork properly with
  30 other third party bridge products. Bridges communicate with eachother
  31 by sending and receiving BPDUs (Bridge Protocol Data Units). These
  32 BPDUs can be recognised by an ethernet destination address of
  33 01:80:c2:00:00:00.
  34
  35 The spanning tree protocol can also be turned off (for those
  36 situations where it just doesn't make sense, for example when this
  37 linux box is the only bridge on the LAN, or when you know that there
  38 are no loops in the topology.)
  39
  40 The 2004 version of the 802.1D specification describes the Rapid
  41 Spanning Tree Protocol, which supercedes the older Spanning Tree
  42 Protocol while providing for backward compatible operation with it.
  43 It provides for faster reconfiguration during network changes than
  44 STP in many cases.
  45
  46 .SH NOTES
  47 TODO: Indicate lack of persistence of configuration across restarts of
  48 daemon.
  49
  50 .SH SEE ALSO
  51 .BR rstpctl(8),
  52 .BR brctl(8)
  53
  54 .SH COPYRIGHT
  55 This manual page Copyright (c) 2006 EMC Corporation.
  56
  57 This manual page is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
  58 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
  59 Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
  60 any later version. It comes with NO WARRANTY.
  61 .\" The full GNU General Public License is included in this distribution in the
  62 .\" file called LICENSE.
  63
  64 .SH AUTHOR
  65 Srinivas Aji <Aji_Srinivas@emc.com>