Settings and internal defaults are all listed in the file. Inactive settings
are commented out.
- Settings
- allow IP-address-or-range [...]
Used only with:
- Agents running on Windows
- Agents running in standalone mode on UNIX or Linux (-s option on startup).
Limits connections to the agent. Connections are allowed only
from the IP addresses that match IP-address-or-range. By default connections
are allowed from all addresses.
Specify one or more of the following:
- IP Address: fully-qualified IP address, such as 255.192.192.003.
The specific IP address is allowed.
- IP Address range: partially-qualified IP address, such as 192.168
or 192.168.63. All IP addresses that match this qualification are allowed.
Note: If you are running the agent on a superserver like inetd or xinetd,
use another method to control access. You may consider a firewall, TCP wrappers
(hosts.allow and hosts.deny), or xinetd's built-in filtering capability.
- ccviewroot root-path
- Sets the default view root for this host. See ClearCase documentation
on init for more information. Internal defaults are as follows:
- Windows: ccviewroot M:
- UNIX or Linux: ccviewroot /view
- command_output_cache size
- Causes the agent to cache output until it reaches the specified size (in
bytes). The internal default is not to cache. Using a cache can significantly
improve agent performance and reduce network overhead. The best size to use
depends on how much output commands produce.
Minimum value: 2048. A value
of 2048 is used internally if the setting is less than that.
- cygwin
-
Enables agent to work on a Windows host using Cygwin, a Linux-like
environment. When using Cygwin, a number of Linux tools are available to the
agent.
When this setting is use, the cygwin_script_magic and shell
settings may also need to be set. Example::
cygwin
shell C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe --login -c "%s"
cygwin_script_magic #!/bin/bash
The shell setting must match
your installation of Cygwin.
- cygwin_script_magic
Used only with:
- Agents on Windows when cygwin is set
Specifies the #! line to use when
executing steps. The default is #!/bin/bash.
- disable_telnet
- Using telnet is recommended to test the agent connection.
- For the agent, there is some built-in processing overhead associated with
processing and correctly handling telnet control sequences.
- This setting allows you to disable the agent’s normal internal handling
of special telnet character codes which can slightly improve performance.
(This setting is recommend for production environments.)
- disable_transcode
- Turns off processing the agent performs to convert international data
if the operating system is not using UTF-8 encoding. (UTF-8 is recommended
for the agent operating system to avoid mixed encodings and data corruption)
- If the operating sytem does not use UTF-8 encoding, to correctly communicate
with other applications, the agent must convert data to the correct encoding
for the operating system's locale settings.
- For operating systems that do not use UTF-8 this setting is recommended
and can significantly improve the performance of the agent.
- enable_agent_dll
- Enables DLL process tracing, a debugging tool.
- env_recursion_limit number-of-recursions
- Sets the variable-replacement recursion limit for pre-parsing. If not
set, the limit is 32.
- extensions
- Specifies path to external library of functions. The functions can be
used as dot commands in a step. If not set, external libraries are not loaded.
During
parsing, the first token in the step command is taken as the function name.
The second token is a string, and the third is an integer timeout value (in
seconds).
Requirement: dynamic loader support in the operating system.
For example, /usr/include/dlfcn.h in UNIX or Linux. Default values used internally:
- UNIX or Linux: /usr/local/bin/bfextensions.so
- Windows: c:\program files\ibm\build forge\agent\bfextensions.dll
- lang lang-code
Used only when:
- The Management Console does not provide a valid language
Sets the language used by the agent to write messages and command output.
Normally it is not set explicitly because the agent uses the language specified
by the Management Console. However, it can be useful if the desired locale
is not available on the system. It is also useful as a backup, in case the
Management Console fails to communicate a lang or communicates an invalid
lang.
The internal default is en, as if it were explicitly set as follows:
- leave_tmp_file
-
This setting causes the temporary file used to hold step commands
to be retained, rather than deleted after command execution. In troubleshooting,
the file can be compared to the steps as they appear in the Management Console.
Note: Do
not use this setting for normal operations.
- locale locale-code.charset-code
Used only with:
- UNIX and Linux systems. Windows handles locales differently.
Sets the language and multibyte character set to be used by localized
applications. This setting works by setting the LANG environment variable
for the agent context.
To set up the agent to treat command output
as US English UTF-8, use the UTF-8 locale for your operating system. For example,
on Linux use the following representation.
locale en_US.UTF-8
To
determine the correct representation of the UTF-8 locale for your operating
system, run the locale -a command.
If not set, the agent uses the locale
of the system. This setting is a convenience. It is especially useful if the
default locale of the operating system is not the locale that you want the
agent to use, or if changing the system locale to meet agent requirements
is not practical.
- magic_login user:encoded-password
The agent normally uses administrative privileges (such as root or
admin) to log on to the operating system. The magic_login setting is an alternative
to standard system authentication. It allows the system to authenticate your
login with a single user name and password.
If the agent is run as
the root or admin user, this setting is ignored and normal authentication
is attempted.
Note: The agent runs all commands using the permissions of
the user who started the agent, not the user name used to log in.
Used
only with:
- Situations where running the agent with administrative privileges is not
possible (for example, System i with i5/OS, or old UNIX systems that do not
work with PAM).
- Situations where running the agent with administrative privileges is not
permissible (due to security policies).
To configure a login for the agent:
- Create a server authentication to use a user name and password. In the
Management Console, go to .
For this example the user name is build and
the password is MySecretPassword.
- Create a server that uses the agent. Associate the server authentication
with this server (Authentication field).
- Generate an encoded password for the agent. In the installation directory
for the agent, execute bfagent -P with the desired password.
An
SMD5 hash-encoded password is returned, as follows:
bfagent -P "MySecretPassword"
eca0b7f2f4fbf110f7df570c70df844e1658744a4871934a
- In BFAgent.conf, set magic_login to use the desired user
name and encoded password.
magic_login build:eca0b7f2f4fbf110f7df570c70df844e1658744a4871934a
- Start the agent.
- Test the server connection. In Servers, select
the server, then click Test Server.
- map drive-and-user-spec[; ...]
- Specifies a mapped drive. Some systems may require drive mappings, for
example because a shell is run from a shared drive. Mappings specified on
the agent are performed before mappings specified by _MAP environment variables
in the Management Console. Example of two drive mappings:
map X:=//host1/share;Z:=//host2/share(username,password)
- map_drive_is_failure
- If set, causes a step to fail upon encountering an unmapped drive specification,
before step execution. If not set, steps ignore drive failures and attempt
to execute the step. In that case you may need to take care that the failure
generates a meaningful error message.
- monitor_pipe path
Reserved. Do not uncomment this setting.
- no_preparse_command
- Disables the variable-expansion parsing that the agent normally performs
on a command before passing it to the shell. See also the _NO_PREPARSE_COMMAND
environment variable, which can be used for an single project or step.
- no_pty
Used only with:
- Agents running on UNIX or Linux systems.
Can be used as an alternate method for fixing the tendency of
the system shell to deadlock when interacting with the agent's pseudo-terminal.
Commonly used with HP/UX and z/OS. Other methods are:
- Using an alternate shell
- Using the nologonshell setting
The
no_pty setting disables pseudo-terminal allocation.
Note: Using no_pty has
side effects on some commands. For example, the ls command
returns output in a single column rather than three. If you use this setting,
test thoroughly before deploying the job to a production environment.
- nologonshell
Used only with:
- Agents running on UNIX or Linux.
Causes the shell run by the agent to be a normal shell, not a
logon shell. Often used when logon shells provide verbose output, change environment
settings in undesired ways, or attempt to communicate interactively with the
user. Those behaviors are not desirable for the agent, because it runs as
a user without being an interactive user.
Note: The z/OS system always sources
the /etc/profile script for both logon shells and non-logon shells. You may
need to alter its contents or use another shell if its behavior does not work
well with the agent.
See also the shellflag setting.
Flags can be used to alter logon script behavior.
- port port-number-or-range [...]
Used only with:
- Agents running in standalone mode on UNIX or Linux (-s option on startup).
Specifies the port that the agent uses to listen for connections
with the Management Console.
Note: The port is set to 5555 by default. It
is set for UNIX or Linux in /etc/services.
- shell shell_name [options]
- Specifies the default shell. Internal defaults are as follows:
- Windows: shell cmd.exe /q /c "%s" unless the following
settings are used:
- If the cygwin setting is used, the default is shell
C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe --login -c "%s"
- If the cygwin setting is not used, the default is shell
cmd.exe /u /q /c "%s"
- UNIX or Linux: the shell set for the user's account, or /bin/sh if
the user's shell can not be determined. Note that you cannot specify parameters
in this setting, but you can use the shellflag setting to
pass them. The agent automatically forces the default to be a logon shell
by inserting a hyphen. For example, /bin/ksh is sent as -ksh.
If shell is set explicitly, then nologonshell is
set implicitly. See nologonshell.
- System i: Set the shell value to /bin/sh
This setting can be overridden from within a step. A step that starts
with a line containing #! overrides the shell setting and
the nologonshell setting is used to execute the step commands.
- shell_compatible_undef_vars
- Forces representation of undefined variables to be an empty string. If
not set, the representation is the variable name for variables of format $VAR,
${VAR}, or %VAR% and the empty string for $[VAR].
- shellarg
Used only with:
- Agents running on UNIX or Linux.
Use this setting if it appears that commands are being scrambled.
Some shells on Red Hat Linux Enterprise require this setting.
The setting
changes the way a command script is passed to the shell. Normally the script
is passed through standard input:
/bin/sh < /tmp/bfshellscript.sh
This
setting causes scripts to be executed by passing them as parameters:
/bin/sh /tmp/bfshellscript.sh
- shellflag flag
Used only with:
- Agents running on UNIX or Linux.
Adds a flag when running a shell. Only one flag can be specified.
It is commonly used to disable rc script processing in order to reduce output
or undesired processing. Examples:
- csh and derivatives: use shellflag -f to disable rc script
processing.
- bash: use shellflag –-noprofile to disable profile script
processing.
- update_path path
Identifies the full path to the Build Forge agent executable. It is
set automatically during installation. The directory is a default for the
specific operating system or the installation directory you specify.
Note: Ignored
on Windows agents. The update path is taken from registry keys. The keys are
set during agent installation.