Generic processes are processes that are designed to run outside normal component or
application processing. Generic processes are not specific to a particular component and
can be used in any number of applications. They are like general purpose processes. You can use
generic processes to download and install packages on the system or perform other configuration
management related tasks such as configuring SSH or completing FTP tasks. With a generic process,
for example, you can update Linux agents that were recently installed by using SSH to run as a
service on a Linux computer. Linux agents cannot be updated in this way during a remote
installation.
Generic processes can be used anywhere an application or component process might not be needed.
Generic processes are run by agents on hosts that are managed by the agents. You can use generic
processes in these instances, for example:
- In conjunction with a number of different component processes that do not fit well into a
component template
- When you want to run processes that directly affect IBM® UrbanCode™ Deploy agents
that are unrelated to component, such as changing the agent configuration
Like component processes, generic processes consist of plug-in steps. Generic processes are
created in the same way that component processes are created: steps are placed and configured in the
process design editor. All plug-ins can be used, but some might be of little or no use outside a
deployment. See Processes.
To run a generic process, click Processes, and then
click the generic process. On the Dashboard tab for the process, specify a
resource (in most cases, an agent) in the Resource list, and then click
Submit.
Generic processes can also be run from within component processes.
Tip: You can set a default
resource for generic processes:
- Click the generic process to open it.
- Open the Configuration tab.
- Click Basic Settings.
- In the Default Resource field, specify the default resource to run the
process on. In most cases, specify an agent.
- Click Save.
Tip: To set these properties on new agents, create a generic process that updates the
installed.properties file and run the process on new agents.
- Create a generic process that appends the property to the file located at /conf/agent/installed.properties (for example, use a Shell step to append the property to
the file). Make sure you have the right file, the default working directory for a generic process is
\var\work.
- Once you've added the property, go to the Resources -> Agents tab, select
the agents, and go to Actions -> Restart . This will restart the agent
process and pick up the new property. It is recommended restarting no more than ~100 agents at a
time to make sure they're all able to reconnect to the server quickly. (If the agents are installed
as services and you don't mind restarting the whole machine, you could alternatively use the Linux
or Windows System tools plug-ins to restart the whole machine as part of the generic process,
removing the need to restart all the agents from the UI.)
- If later you need to run the generic process in bulk, you can create an application just for
that purpose and add all the agents to an environment. You can then use the For every
agent stepto run a generic process on all the agents at once. It is recommended you
should only do this process on a few agents so that you can test that everything is configured
properly before moving to configuring the agents in bulk.