omniNames ?

[Kim Gillies]

All,
  I'm writing a utility class to provide a higher level interface to
the omniNames Name Service for our project.

  I'd like to be able to tell whether or not the service is running and
so far I get results that I don't understand.  

  For instance, if I reboot my machine (I'm running Solaris 2.6) and
run my test program with no omniNames running, the call to
resolve_initial_references throws NO_RESOURCES.

  If I then run omniNames resolve_initial_references succeeds as expected.
No problem with this.
  
  Now if I kill omniNames and run the test program again
resolve_initial_references still succeeds and I can narrow the object.  When
I try an operation, such as resolve, the COMM_FAILURE exception is thrown.
Why doesn't resolve_initial_references fail with NO_RESOURCES?

  I've traced the code and I know it involves initialization from the
config file but I still don't understand the above behavior.

  What is the best way to test for a running Name Service?  
  
  Thanks!
  
  Kim Gillies
  kgillies@gemini.edu
  Gemini 8-m Telescopes Project