what is slot in blockchain?

Question

I'm doing Hyperledger Fabric CA tutorial HSM2 (http://blog.daum.net/_blog/BlogTypeView.do?blogid=0ThNq&articleno=855&categoryId=45&regdt=20130628125634)

I'm doing as the tutorial says but I don't know what slot and Token mean. Searching for a slot will only show me that slot is where you plug in your graphics card or LAN card.

*****************/src/lib/common$ softhsm2-util --show-slot
Available slots:
Slot 0
    Slot info:
        Description:      SoftHSM slot ID 0x0
        Manufacturer ID:  SoftHSM project
        Hardware version: 2.5
        Firmware version: 2.5
        Token present:    yes
    Token info:
        Manufacturer ID:  SoftHSM project
        Model:            SoftHSM v2
        Hardware version: 2.5
        Firmware version: 2.5
        Serial number:
        Initialized:      no
        User PIN init.:   no
        Label:

I want to know what is slot and token. thank you :)

Answer 1

What you are looking at is the HSM, or hardware security module. It is a piece of hardware (or can be replicated by software, such as the softhsm you are using) to store and generate cryptographic keys. Of note, it is not required to use an HSM to operate Fabric.

But to answer your question, what is a slot, in am HSM it is simply the logical division in the HSM storage engine where the HSM token is stored. You need to initialize the HSM token and it will become obvious what these values are, mainly because they are all specified in the command:

softhsm2-util --init-token --slot 0 --label "ForFabric" --so-pin 1234 --pin 98765432

Again, the slot is the logical partition where it stored, the label is the name of the token, and the pin is essentially the access key.

Fabric provides a short document on setting the HSM up here:

https://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev-setup/build.html#running-the-unit-tests