Chapter 2
Connecting to the
Perforce Server

As mentioned earlier, two programs do the bulk of Perforce's work:

• The p4d program runs on the Perforce server. It manages the shared file repository, and keeps track of users, clients, protections, and other Perforce metadata.

• The p4 program runs on each Perforce client. It sends the users' requests to the p4d server program for processing, and communicates with p4d via TCP/IP.

Before you begin

If this is not the case (for instance, if you're installing Perforce from scratch), you'll also have to install the Perforce server before continuing. See the appendix, "Installing Perforce" on page 139, for information on how to install the server.

The information in the appendix is intended to help you install a server for evaluation purposes. If you're installing a production server, or are planning on extensive testing of your evaluation server, we strongly encourage you to read the full installation instructions in the Perforce System Administrator's Guide.

Setting up your environment to use Perforce

• the name of the host on which p4d is running, and

• the port on which p4d is listening

If your site is already using Perforce, it's possible that your system administrator has already set P4PORT for you; if not, you'll need to set it yourself.

Either way, after setting P4PORT to point to your server, you should verify your client's connection to the Perforce server with the p4 info command.

Telling Perforce clients where the server is

• If you've just installed the Perforce server yourself, you already know this, having configured the server on a specific host to listen to a specific port.

• If you're connecting to an existing Perforce installation, you'll have to ask your system administrator for the host and port of the Perforce server.

The definition of P4PORT can be shortened if the Perforce client is running on the same host as the server. In this case, only the port number need be provided to p4. If p4d is running on a host named or aliased perforce, listening on port 1666, the definition of P4PORT for the p4 client can be dispensed with altogether. For example:

When P4PORT has been set, you should re-verify the connection with p4 info, as described below. Once this has been done, Perforce is ready to use.

Verifying the connection to the Perforce server

The Server address: field shows which Perforce server to which the client has connected; it displays the host and port number on which p4d is listening.

In the above example, everything is fine. If, however, you receive a variant of this message:

then P4PORT has not been correctly set. If the value you see in the third line of the error message is perforce:1666 (as above), then P4PORT has not been set at all; if the value is anything else, P4PORT has been incorrectly set. In either case, you'll need to set the value of P4PORT.