[GemStone-Smalltalk] How to configure GS/S 6.1.2 through a firewall (blast from the past)

[James Foster]

On Feb 25, 2014, at 11:30 AM, Normand Mongeau <nmongeau at videotron.ca> wrote:

> I need to give access to our database to someone who is offsite.
>  
> So in essence you’re saying that this is not possible, unless I open all ports on my firewall?

This is certainly possible, and in fact is the most common use case for an enterprise client/server application. The confusion rests in selecting the hostname (or IP address) for the Gem vs. for the Stone. The connection from the GCI client to the Gem can be over the WAN (even the Internet). In that case you need to have two well-known ports open on your Gem host (as we have discussed). Once you have a Gem then you tell the Gem how to connect to the Stone.

The tricky part (that makes sense when you understand it but is initially quite confusing) is that the address you give for the Stone is from the perspective of the Gem, not from the perspective of the GCI client. So, in the following screenshot (taken from the Jade login window for 6.1.x), the Gem is addressed externally (“myGemHost.gemtalksystems.com") while the Stone is addressed internally (“localhost"). If you are going to run the Gem and the Stone on the same machine, then localhost is just the right thing to use! This will be the Gem host, not the GCI client host.

Note that the name lookup done by the Gem need not make sense to the GCI client. So if I had multiple machines in my data center, I could have a public hostname mapped to the Gem host, and a private hostname mapped to the Stone host. So the Gem could be at seaside.gemtalksystems.com (with the name lookup done by the GCI client OS), while the Stone could be at myStone.local (and the Gem host will do a name lookup on ‘myStone.local’). Also, you could use a local address range (e.g., 192.168.1.x for the Stone). 

Just remember that the GCI client is not responsible for connecting to the Stone, it just tells the Gem where to find the Stone—and the most common location is localhost.

Does that make sense?

James

[smaller graphic attached to see if the mailing list is satisfied]

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.gemtalksystems.com/mailman/private/gemstone-smalltalk/attachments/20140225/d3c549d8/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Screen Shot 2014-02-25 at 12.15.14 PM.png
Type: image/png
Size: 13165 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.gemtalksystems.com/mailman/private/gemstone-smalltalk/attachments/20140225/d3c549d8/attachment.png>