Odyssey Wire Protocols

This page documents the "wire" protocols used by the Odyssey system, i.e. the exact formats of the byte sequences sent through various communications channels.

We have the following wire protocol request types:

• OdysseyWireProtocolJVMRequest: The protocol used to send a request into a JVM.
• OdysseyWireProtocolConnectKey: The output of the SSH process.

The stdin of the main server JVM consists of a sequence of JVM requests. The stdin of the other JVMs consists of an SSH process output (OdysseyWireProtocolConnectKey) followed by a sequence of JVM requests (OdysseyWireProtocolJVMRequest).

As well, it is worth mentioning the format of the output of the adapters specifically:

• restart: See OdysseyWireProtocolConnectKey.
• webgate, cgigate: CGI. These adapters simply copy CGI output generated by the JVM to their stdout and hence to the controlling web server. The format is specified by the CGI specification.
• cmdgate: FIFOs for stdin, stdout, and stderr are set up. The stdin, stdout, and stderr of the adapter are connected to the JVM, where they appear as an InputStream and two OutputStream objects.

-- IsaacMorland - 16 Jan 2007