Why does STM use networking sockets (AF_INET) rather than local sockets (AF_UNIX)?
STM implemented its inter-process communication using AF_INET sockets to fulfill the requirement that communication between the User Interface (UI) and the rest of the system be able to occur remotely. This means that a UI running on a local system can connect to STM running on a remote system. This capability allows the UI to be connected to multiple systems running STM, both local and remote, and control and run tests on each of those systems at the same time. The STM developers did not want to implement a separate communication mechanism between the UI and STM for local and remote connections. The ability to run STM on a remote system has not been tested on the initial release (MPE/iX 6.5). This feature is planned to be formally released in an upcoming version of MPE/iX. The HP-UX version of STM also implements inter-process conmmunication using AF_INET sockets. Entries in the system map are labeled “Unknown. Many MPE/iX systems are “over-configured”, that is, their configuration fi
