Conductor Command-line Options (Last updated: $Date: 2001/10/17 16:46:03 $)

1. Usage

Conductor's usage is as follows:

2. Interception ports

One or more port numbers can be specified for interception by Conductor. Ports can be specified by number of by service name (as specified in /etc/services or similar). Locally initiated connections that are destined for a matching remote port number will be intercepted by Conductor.

Zero or more port numbers can be specified. To perform interception, Conductor must be run as root.

3. Conductor options

-v Increase Conductor's global verbosity level. Multiple v's can be used for increasing effect.
-V<module>=<level> Set the verbosity level of a particular Conductor module. This setting overrides the global verbosity setting.
-P<filename> Specify a different properties file.
-D<propname>=<value> Override the value of a property with the given value. If a property name is given alone, the default value of "true" is assigned to that property.
-m Enable measuremnt mode.
-L<address> Set Conductor's notion of the local node address. This option is useful when the node has multiple interfaces. This option does not affect Conductor's notion of the local host name.
-E This node is an edge node. Consult a file to determine what destinations are part of the Conductor net and which are not. See more documentation in "EdgeNodes."
-? Obtain a usage message.

4. Meta-options

Meta-options control the way in which Java is invoked and must appear before any of the normal Conductor options. The following options are supported:

-jdb Run Conductor under JDB.
-nice Run Conductor under maxiumum niceness.
-strace Trace Conductor with strace. Use this option with care as it is not compatible with native threads.

Care should be taken when combining -jdb, -nice, and/or -strace options.

To pass arguments to the java runtime, add an addition "-" to the begining of the option. For example, to turn off just-in-time compilation, invoke

5. Configuration

The base for Conductor configuration is the properties file. If Conductor is run from the source directory, the name for this file is ./Conductor.properties. If Conductor is installed, the configuration file is taken from $HOME_INSTALL_DIR/Conductor.properties where $HOME_INSTALL_DIR is defined in Makefile.in at install time. The default configuration file name can be overriden using the -P command-line option as described above.

More information on the Confuration of Conductor can be found here.

6. To root or not to root

Conductor should normally be run as root. Root access is required to use the IPcept facility, allowing transparent connection interception. Root access is also required to set up the kernel firewall, used on intermediate nodes to detect Conductor nodes by intercepting UDP messages.

Root access is not required if Conductor is run on a target/server machine. However, without root access, Conductor will be unable to masquerade, fooling the application server into believing that the source of the connection is the original source.

Sudo can be used to establish root access.


Conductor is a product of Mark Yarvis (yarvis@fmg.cs.ucla.edu) and the FMG Research Group at UCLA's Department of Computer Science.
Copyright © 2001 The Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved.