Process agent properties and command-line options

AdminGroupName string

-admingroup string

Specifies the name of the UNIX user group that has administrator privileges. Members of this group can access the process control system.

ncoadmin

Specifies the authentication mode to use to verify the credentials of a user or remote process agent daemon. The possible values depend on the operating system.

Only the PAM option can be specified for authentication.

Valid values are as follows:

• UNIX: The Posix getpwnam or getspnam function is used to verify user credentials. Depending on system setup, passwords are verified by using the /etc/password file, the /etc/shadow shadow password file, NIS, or NIS+. If the process agent is running as a nonroot user, ensure that this user has read-access to the /etc/shadow.
• PAM: If PAM is specified as the authentication mode, Pluggable Authentication Modules are used to verify user credentials. The service name used by the gateway when the PAM interface is initialized is netcool.
• KERBEROS: If KERBEROS is specified as the authentication mode, Kerberos IV authentication is used to verify user credentials. A Kerberos IV authentication server is required for this option.
• none: Authentication is not attempted. The process agent daemon prompt accepts any login credentials. Use this option only for testing purposes. Do not use it on a production environment.

Valid values are as follows:

• WINDOWS: This is the default authentication mode, where the process agent authenticates against the Windows account.
• none: Authentication is not attempted. The process agent daemon prompt accepts any login credentials. Use this option only for testing purposes. Do not use it on a production environment.

-authpasswdplain

When set to TRUE (default), the Process Agent will first try to authenticate clients with a plain text password. If that fails, authentication will be tried with the encrypted password. When set to FALSE, the Process Agent will first try to authenticate clients with the encrypted password. If that fails, authentication will be tried with the plain text password.

-configfile string

The path to the process agent configuration file.

$NCHOME/omnibus/etc/nco_pa.conf

Sets the maximum number of connections that are available for running external actions.

30

-cryptalgorithm string

Specifies the cryptographic algorithm to use for decrypting passwords that were encrypted with the nco_aes_crypt utility and then stored in the process agent configuration file. Set the string value as follows:

• When in FIPS 140–2 mode, use AES_FIPS.
• When in non-FIPS 140–2 mode, you can use either AES_FIPS or AES. Use AES only if you need to maintain compatibility with passwords that were encrypted using the tools provided in versions earlier than Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus V7.2.1.

The value that you specify must be identical to that used when you ran the nco_aes_crypt command with the -c setting, to encrypt the passwords in the routing definition section of the file.

Use the -cryptalgorithm command-line option in conjunction with the -keyfile option.

This option is deprecated. Use the messagelevel property instead.

Enables debugging. The integer value specifies the amount of debug information written to the log. Available levels are 1 (Debug), 2 (Information), 3 (Warning), 4 (Error), and 5 (Fatal). The default is 3.

When running at debug level 1, the process agent logs information about processes it is about to start. This information includes the path to the program, each of the command-line arguments, and the effective user ID of the process. If applicable, the log also includes the current working directory, and additionally for UNIX, the effective group ID, and the umask (in octal) of the process.

When running at debug level 2, the log contains a message showing which user account the process agent is running under.

-DNS string

Specifies a value to override the host name in DNS environments. Ensure that the same value is specified in the process agent configuration file.

-help

Displays help information about the process agent and exits.

-keyfile string

Specifies the path and name of the file that contains the key to be used for decrypting the encrypted passwords that are stored in the process agent configuration file.

The key file that you specify must be identical to that used when you ran the nco_aes_crypt utility with the -k setting, to encrypt the passwords in the routing definition section of the file.

Use the -keyfile command-line option in conjunction with the -cryptalgorithm option to decrypt passwords.

-killprocessgroup

If specified, when the process agent daemon stops a process, it also sends a signal to kill any processes in the same operating system process group.

-logfile string

This option is deprecated. Use the messagelog property instead.

Specifies an alternative log file. On UNIX, the log can be redirected to stderr and stdout. On Windows, the log is always written to a file.

$NCHOME/omnibus/log/pa_name.log, Where pa_name is the name of the process agent specified with the -name option.

-logsize integer

This option is deprecated. Use the maxlogfilesize property instead.

Specifies the maximum log file size in KB. The default is 1024 KB, and the minimum size is 16 KB.

-maxlogfilesize integer

Maximum log file size in KB.

1024

-messagelevel integer

Specifies the message logging level. Possible values are: debug, info, warn, error, and fatal. Messages that are logged at each level are as follows:

• fatal: fatal only
• error: fatal and error
• warn: fatal, error, and warn
• info: fatal, error, warn, and info
• debug: fatal, error, warn, info, and debug

-messagelog integer

Path to the message log file.

$OMNIHOME/log/NCO_PA.log

-name string

Specifies the name of the server for this process agent. If not specified, the default process agent name is NCO_PA.

-newlog

This option is obsolete.

The process agent always overwrites the previous log file.

-noautostart

If specified, the process agent does not start any services automatically, even if they are set to start automatically in the nco_pa.conf file.

TRUE

-noconfig

If specified, the process agent does not read the nco_pa.conf configuration file. This forces process control to start with no configuration information.

NoDaemon TRUE|FALSE

By default, process control forks into the background to run as a daemon process. When -nodaemon is specified, the process runs in the foreground.

-oldtimestamp

The nco_pad message log uses an ISO8601 formatted timestamp, for example 2014-06-30 17:20:07.

This option reverts the message log timestamp to the old format, for example Jun 30 17:20:07 2014.

This old format is inconsistent with the timestamps generated by applications that use NLog() which have an ISO8601 format.

-password string

Specifies the password that is used to log in to other process agents.

-propsfile string

Path to the properties file.

$OMNIHOME/etc/ncp_pa.props

RedirectFile string

Specifies a file to which the stderr and stdout messages of processes started by the process agent are directed. This is useful for troubleshooting purposes.

To achieve a similar result, run the process from the command-line interface. Each process has a console window in which processing output is displayed. Alternatively, if the process agent runs as a Windows service, open the properties for the service, select Local System account from the Log On tab, and select Allow service to interact with desktop.

Specifies the number of seconds that a process started by process control must run to be considered a successful start.

5

The process agent attempts to restart a process if the process exits. If the process exits after retrytime seconds, the process agent attempts to restart the process immediately. If the process exits before retrytime seconds, the process agent attempts to restart the process at the exponential rate of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ..., 256 seconds. The process agent resets the timing interval after eight attempts to start the process.

If the process fails to run for more than retrytime seconds, the RetryCount (specified in the process definition) for that process is also decremented. If the process runs successfully for at least retrytime seconds, the RetryCount is set back to its original value. If the RetryCount is 0, there is no limit to the number of restart attempts.

-roguetimeout integer

Specifies the time in seconds to wait for the process to shut down.

30

The minimum time is 5 seconds.

-secure

If -secure is specified, all clients need to authenticate themselves with a valid user name and password, which are specified with the -user and -password command-line options.

In non-FIPS 140–2 mode, login information is automatically encrypted in transmission when the process agent connects to another process agent. In FIPS 140–2 mode, login information is passed as plain text, and SSL must be used if you require encryption during transmission.

TicketDir string

-ticketdir string

Directory for Kerberos tickets if -authenticate is set to KERBEROS.

-user string

Specifies the user name that is used to log into another process agent. If you do not specify this option, the user that runs the nco_pad command is used to make the connection.

This option must be specified if connecting to a process agent that is running in secure mode (using the -secure option).

This user name and its associated password (which you specify using -password) are used if no login credentials are specified in the routing section of the process control configuration file.

-version

Displays version information about the process agent and exits.

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