Provided by: alfred_2024.0-1build2_amd64 
NAME
alfred - Almighty Lightweight Fact Remote Exchange Daemon
SYNOPSIS
alfred [options]
DESCRIPTION
alfred is a user space daemon for distributing arbitrary local information over the mesh/network in a
decentralized fashion. This data can be anything which appears to be useful - originally designed to
replace the batman-adv visualization (vis), you may distribute hostnames, phone books, administration
information, DNS information, the local weather forecast ...
alfred runs as daemon in the background of the system. A user may insert information by using the alfred
binary on the command line, or use special programs to communicate with alfred (done via unix sockets).
alfred then takes care of distributing the local information to other alfred servers on other nodes. This
is done via IPv6 link-local multicast, and does not require any configuration. A user can request data
from alfred, and will receive the information available from all alfred servers in the network.
OPTIONS
-v, --version
Print the version
-h, --help
Display a brief help message.
-u, --unix-path path
path to unix socket used for client-server communication.
CLIENT OPTIONS
-s, --set-data data-type
Sets new data to distribute from stdin for the supplied data type (0-255).
Note that 0 - 63 are reserved (please send an e-mail to the authors if you want to register a
datatype), and can not be used on the commandline. Information must be periodically written again
to alfred, otherwise it will timeout and alfred will forget about it (after 10 minutes).
-r, --request data-type
Collect data from the network and print on stdout
-d, --verbose
Show extra information in the data output
-d, --force
Start server even when batman-adv or interface(s) are not yet available.
-V, --req-version version
Specify the data version set for -s
Skipping the parameter entirely has the same effect as setting the parameter to 0 ('-V 0').
-M, --modeswitch mode
primary
Switch daemon to mode primary
secondary
Switch daemon to mode secondary
-I, --change-interface interface
Change the alfred server to use the new interface(s)
-B, --change-bat-iface interface
Change the alfred server to use the new batman-adv interface
-S, --server-status
Request server status information such as mode & interfaces
-E, --event-monitor
Start alfred event monitor connecting to the alfred server and reporting update events
SERVER OPTIONS
-i, --interface iface
Specify the interface (or comma separated list of interfaces) to listen on. Use 'none' to disable
interface operations.
-b batmanif
Specify the batman-adv interface configured on the system (default: bat0). Use 'none' to disable
the batman-adv based best server selection.
The interface option -i is optional. If interface 'none' is specified, the alfred daemon will not
communicate with other alfred instances on the network unless the interface list is modified at
runtime via the unix socket. The -b option is optional, and only needed if you run alfred on a
batman-adv interface not called bat0, or if you don't use batman-adv at all (use '-b none'). In
this case, alfred will still work but will not be able to find the best next primary server based
on metrics.
-m, --primary
Start up the daemon in primary mode, which accepts data from secondaries and syncs it with other
primaries.
alfred servers may either run as primary or secondary in the network. Primaries will announce
their status via broadcast, so that secondaries can find them. Secondaries will then send their
data to their nearest primary (based on TQ). Primaries will exchange their data (which they have
received from secondaries or got on their own) with other primaries. By using primaries and
secondaries, overhead can be reduced while still keeping redundancy (by having multiple
primaries). Obviously, at least one primary must be present in the network to let any data
exchange happen. Also having all nodes in primary mode is possible (for maximum decentrality and
overhead).
-c, --update-command command
Specify command to execute on data change. It will be called with data-type list as arguments.
-p, --sync-period period
Specify alfred synchronization period, in seconds. If not specified, the default ALFRED_INTERVAL
setting of 10 seconds will be used. Fractional seconds are supported.
-4 group-address
Specify the IPv4 multicast group address and enable IPv4 data-sharing (disabling IPv6
communication). This option is required on systems that do not support IPv6 addressing.
EXAMPLES
Start an alfred server listening on bridge br0 (assuming that this bridge includes the batman interface
bat0):
alfred -i br0 -m
Send data to the alfred server and store it under id 65:
cat /etc/hostname | alfred -s 65
Retrieve all data stored as id 65 from all connected alfred servers:
alfred -r 65
{ "fe:f1:00:00:01:01", "OpenWRT-node-1\x0a" },
{ "fe:f1:00:00:02:01", "OpenWRT-node-2\x0a" },
{ "fe:f1:00:00:03:01", "OpenWRT-node-3\x0a" },
SEE ALSO
batadv-vis(8), batctl(8)
AUTHOR
alfred was written by Simon Wunderlich <sw@simonwunderlich.de> and Sven Eckelmann <sven@open-mesh.com>.
This manual page was written by Simon Wunderlich <sw@simonwunderlich.de> and Sven Eckelmann <sven@open-
mesh.com>.
Linux Sep 21, 2013 ALFRED(8)