Geneos File Agent - User Guide

Introduction Copied

The Geneos File Agent is a lightweight data collection process which runs on an application server, and forwards log data onwards to a separate process for monitoring. This separation is intended to minimise the impact on the application server machine, so as to avoid impacting performance of the monitored process.

At present a single File Agent process can serve data to a single data consuming process at a time. Supported data consumers at this time include:

• Fix-analyzer 2

For a resilient configuration, multiple consumers can be configured to connect to the same agent so that failure of the connected consumer will cause a failover to the waiting consumer.

This guide is concerned with installing and running the File Agent. Instructions on configuration of the File Agent can be found in the reference guide for the consumer process (e.g. the Fix Analyser 2 reference guide). This is because the File Agent literally acts as an agent: names, locations and matching rules of the files to be read are all configured in the consumer and the agent merely acts upon this instruction.

Installing File Agent Copied

List of Supported Platforms Copied

For the list of supported platforms, see the Compatibility Matrix.

Downloading and Installing (Linux) Copied

The File Agent is available as a tar.gz archive. To install the agent on Linux, unpack the tar.gz file with the following commands:

Once unpacked the tar file is no longer needed and can be removed.

If this is a new installation of the agent, simply place the unpacked files in the directory from which the agent is to be launched.

If upgrading from an earlier version then stop the agent, replace all of the files with those from the new version, and then restart the agent. To remove the agent, remove all file contents of the directory where the tar.gz archive was unpacked.

When Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is running in Enforcing mode, it may deny certain functions of Geneos depending on the implemented configurations and policies.

To see which functions SELinux denies, check the audit log. The log is typically located in /var/log/audit.log, where the log type entry is AVC. The audit log provides the details of any denied access. For example, denied connection to the TCP port. If you experience issues related to this mode, you may opt to disable SELinux, or create policy modules to grant the required access. Please contact your administrator or security team for assistance.

Downloading and Installing (Windows) Copied

The File Agent is optionally available for Windows as an installer binary. When run the File Agent will be installed as a service. The default name for the service is GeneosFileAgent_64 and the default port is 7030. These defaults can be changed when you run the installer.

If you do not want the agent to start automatically as a service whenever Windows is started, open the Services control panel, find and double-click the row for Geneos File Agent and change the startup type to Manual in the Properties dialog.

To uninstall the agent, use the Windows “Add or remove programs” feature. Log files will not be deleted when the uninstaller is run; this is intentional, but means that if you want to remove the directory into which you installed the agent, you may need to do so manually.

Running File Agent Copied

On Windows, the File Agent can be run either by starting the agent service or by executing the agent.windows_64.exe binary from the command line. On Linux, the agent is run by executing the agent.linux_64 binary from the command line.

Running from the command line Copied

Linux

See below for information about the available command line options.

Windows

See below for information about the available command line options.

If you intend to run the agent from the Windows command line, ensure that it is not set to run automatically as a service. (See section Downloading and Installing (Windows) above)

Command line options

File Agent accepts the following command line options:

These options are used when the File Agent is run, installed or uninstalled as a Windows service. They should not be used when running the program from the command line.

Listen port Copied

By default the File Agent listens for connections by consumer processes on TCP port 7030. This value can be overridden by:

• Specifying a different port number during installation (Windows only).
• Altering the value of the \HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GeneosAgents\**serviceName**\PORT registry key (Windows only). On 64-bit versions of Windows, this will be located in \HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\GeneosAgents\**serviceName**\PORT.
• Defining the PORT environment variable.
• Specifying the -port command line option.

Log file Copied

The File Agent produces log output during normal operation ,with timestamps for each entry written in the ISO-8601 format by default. If the agent is run from the command line, messages will be directed to standard output. If the agent is run as a Windows service, the log file will be written to “file-agent.log” in the agent installation directory, unless a different path was specified during installation.

The default log file behaviour can be overridden by:

• Defining the environment variables LOG_FILENAME or LOG_TIME_FORMAT.
• Altering the value of the \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GeneosAgents\serviceName\LOG_FILENAME registry key (Windows only). On 64-bit versions of Windows, this is located in \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\GeneosAgents\``serviceName``\LOG_FILENAME.
• Specifying the -log or -nolog command-line options.

For more information on environment variables, see Netprobe variables.

Running as a Windows Service Copied

You can start and stop the File Agent service using the Services control panel. You should ensure that the “Startup Type” column in the Services control panel shows Automatic if you want the agent service to run every time Windows is rebooted.