How can we get the aliases setting for a user profile?

Products

• CA Workload Automation AE - Business Agents (AutoSys)
• CA Workload Automation AE - Scheduler (AutoSys)
• Workload Automation Agent
• CA Workload Automation DE - System Agent (dSeries)
• CA Workload Automation DE - Business Agents (dSeries)

Issue/Introduction

Customer is not able to get the 'aliases' definitions for each specific user.

 

Environment

Component: Workload Automation Agent

OS: Linux/ UNIX

Cause

Most shell built-in commands are not available in scripts.  Aliases are not expanded in non-interactive shells like the ones invoked by scripts or any background processes.

Resolution

 

The alias setting is not interpreted at the job runtime such as the environment variable setting.

'alias' is a unix command, it forks a process.

 

In order to get the aliases defined for a user profile, you can use the attribute profile in the job definition as follows:

* ----------------- TEST1 ----------------- */

insert_job: TEST1 job_type: CMD
command: "alias > /home/sample/alias.txt"
machine: mymachine
owner: user1
permission:
date_conditions: 0
std_out_file: /home/log/${AUTO_JOB_NAME}_${AUTORUN}.log
std_err_file: /home/log/${AUTO_JOB_NAME}_${AUTORUN}.err
alarm_if_fail: 0
profile: /home/conf/user1/.profile

 

- This is extraction from the .profile of user 'user1'
...
alias lm='ls -al | more'
alias ll='ls -l'
alias la='ls -la'
alias lrt='ls -alrt'
...

 

- extraction from agentparm.txt

# this tells the agent to switch to the user home
oscomponent.initialworkingdirectory=USER

 

- The result after run the job

root:  vi  /home/sample/alias.txt
...
la='ls -la'
ll='ls -l'
lm='ls -al | more'
lrt='ls -alrt'
....

 

 

 

The following command may be added in scripts to expand aliases.

shopt -s expand_aliases

Consult your Linux / Unix admin for more details on the above command.

Note:  It is not recommended to use aliases or any shell built-in commands in shell scripts, they are usually for interactive shell.  Using such variables can break when users/shell are changed or scripts move to another location.