## Configuring Bonobo Activation

## `.server` search path.

To know the list of available CORBA servers on your local machine, the Bonobo Activation daemon searches a number of directories for `.server` XML files which contain the description of the services offered by these servers. By default, Bonobo Activation will try to find them in `${prefix}/lib/bonobo/servers` which may be a problem if users install other applications using Bonobo Activation in different prefixes.

To work around this problem, Bonobo Activation will parse a number of other directories. It will parse the directories listed in the `BONOBO_ACTIVATION_PATH` environment variable. It will parse the prefixes listed in the `GNOME2_PATH` environment variable. If, for example, BONOBO_ACTIVATION_PATH=/opt/gnome2/lib/bonobo/servers:/opt/gnome2/bonobo-activation/lib/bonobo/servers, Bonobo Activation will parse /opt/gnome2/lib/bonobo/servers and /opt/gnome2/bonobo-activation/lib/bonobo/servers If GNOME2_PATH=/opt/gnome2:/opt/gnome2/bonobo-activation, Bonobo Activation will parse /opt/gnome2/lib/bonobo/servers and /opt/gnome2/bonobo-activation/lib/bonobo/servers.

The above environment variables are kept to ease development with Bonobo Activation and for GNOME integration. Bonobo Activation has a much nicer configuration file which allows you to control which directories are parsed by Bonobo Activation. This XML configuration file is located in `/etc/bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-config.xml` or `${prefix}/etc/bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-config.xml`. An empty `bonobo-activation-config.xml` and a sample `bonobo-activation-config.xml.sample` file should be installed on your system.

It is recommended to use the bonobo-activation-sysconf command-line configuration tool to edit this file. However, here is an example of its format.

    <?xml version="1.0"?>

    <oafconfig>

    <searchpath>
    <item>/opt/gnome2/lib/bonobo/servers</item>
    <item>/usr/local/gnome2/lib/bonobo/servers</item>
    <item>/usr/local/lib/bonobo/servers</item>
    <item>/opt/gnome2/bonobo-activation/lib/bonobo/servers</item>
    </searchpath>

    <searchpath>
    <item>/opt/gnome2/bonobo-activation/lib/bonobo/servers</item>
    </searchpath>

    </oafconfig>

There can be any number of `item` tags in a `searchpath` tag and any number of `searchpath` tags in the `oafconfig` tag.