Using the agentcmd utility

There are two main scenarios for using the agentcmd utility:

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• With an agent on a system that has been added to up.time. In this case, the hostname is in the up.time DataStore.
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• With an agent that has been deployed on a system that has not been added to up.time. If there is no agent on the system, or there are network problems, agentcmd returns the following error message: \n

  ERR Unable to contact Agent (10.1.2.34 on port 9998)

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You can use agentcmd in two ways: from the command line or in an agent-side script.

Using agentcmd at the command line

The command line syntax of agentcmd is:

agentcmd <-/+s> <-p #> hostname command

Where:

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• -s = do not use an SSL connection to the agent (default).
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• +s = connect to the agent using SSL. \n

  If SSL is not enabled on the host, the following error message appears:

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  ERR The host was not configured to use SSL

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• -p # = connect to the agent on the specified port (default is 9998).
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• hostname = the name or IP address of the host on which the agent is running.
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• command = the agent command to run.
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For example, to get basic system information from an agent running on the server Solaris1, type the following command:

agentcmd +s Solaris1 sysinfo

The agent will return output similar to the following:

\nSYSNAME=Solaris1
\nDOMAIN=myDomain.com
\nARCH="SunOS Solaris1 5.9 Generic_118558-03 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise"
\nOSVER=5.9
\nNUMCPUS=4
\nMEMSIZE=1048576
\nPAGESIZE=8192
\nSWAPSIZE=1021624
\nGPGSLO=25
\nVXVM=""
\nSDS="YES"
\nHOSTID="808cf673"
\nCPU0=" 0 - - 168 - UltraSPARC - "
\nCPU1=" 1 - - 168 - UltraSPARC - "
\nCPU4=" 4 - - 168 - UltraSPARC - "
\nCPU5=" 5 - - 168 - UltraSPARC - "
\nNET0=lo0=127.0.0.1
\nNET1=hme0=10.0.0.010
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Using agentcmd in an agent-side script

As with netcat, agentcmd is typically used in a script on the monitoring station to perform the following tasks:

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• Contact an agent system.
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• Attempt to run a predefined agent-side script.
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• Return the results of an agent-side script.
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• Validate the status of those results.
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• Return the status to up.time.
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The following example illustrates how to run agentcmd in an agent side script:

NOTE: The rexec in the command below does not indicate use of the rexec system utility. It is a keyword that is used to indicate to the agent that you are attempting to run a pre-defined command.

\n/usr/local/uptime4/scripts/agentcmd [-s/+s] -p [agent port] [agent hostname] rexec [password] [path]
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If you use netcat in your scripts, see the following Knowledge Base articles for information on replacing netcat with agentcmd:

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• Creating Custom Service Monitors in up.time
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• Creating Custom Service Monitors with Retained Data Collection
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• Creating Plug-in Service Monitors in up.time
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