Oracle EBS and ActionsRunner.

Products

• CA Release Automation - Release Operations Center (Nolio)
• CA Release Automation - DataManagement Server (Nolio)

Issue/Introduction

We have come across a problem where the action "copy files or folders" would not copy the file at the right place because the underlying environment variables have changed, but the agent hasn't picked up on those changes. 

This has been observed while using Nolio RA with Oracle EBusiness Suite/Solution which relies heavily on environment variables. 

Environment

Release : 6.6

Component : CA Release Automation Core

Agents on Linux

Cause

The problem is that it is normal for these environment variables to periodically change. In the specific scenario where this was seen - it is also worth noting that the agent was configured to start/run as one user (let's call it naguser) and the ebs actions were running as a different user (we'll call it ebsuser). The user impersonation feature was configured on the agent machine to use sudo as described in the section "Run Processes Under Different Users - Unix/Linux", found here: https://techdocs.broadcom.com/content/broadcom/techdocs/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/intelligent-automation/release-automation-nolio/6-7/installation/deploy-agents.html#concept.dita_687e8efaabea9ff08786ba0f52de0bbe171f8b09_InstallUnixLinuxAgenttoRunasNonRootUser

Resolution

Currently, there is no way to stop the ActionsRunner process in a graceful way (as this was found to clear the session and its references to those environment variables). It was designed in a way that allows an earlier created process to be reused in the future (defaults to end the process when there is no activity in 15 minutes) with other Nolio Actions that might need to run as that user - to offer better performance.

If this kind of feature is something you would like then please submit an Idea (or vote for any existing) on the Community. You can find the area to submit an Idea, here: https://community.broadcom.com/enterprisesoftware/home

From this URL you should be able to find the Idea area by scrolling down a page or two. There is an Add Idea button that you can click to describe the feature, product, etc..

Additional Information

This is not an endorsement, or statement of support per se, but the following workarounds seem to work for the time being. If this article applies to you and your situation then it is recommended/advised to open an Idea requesting for a graceful stop/start of the ActionsRunner's child process.

1. Kill the ActionsRunner.sh process so that the next action starts a new child process. 
2. Configure the timeout in the conf/processes.properties file to 1 minute. Then, while using the parent process, sleep for 60+ seconds to allow the child process to clean itself up.