How the Unix / Linux Agents handles job creation

Products

• CA Automic Workload Automation - Automation Engine

Issue/Introduction

How the Unix / Linux Agents handles job creation

Environment

Component: Unix/Linux Agents

Resolution

1. Password Check
 a. Local: User/PW Check usind Unix APIs
 b. PAM: If PAM Authentication is configured the Agent authorizes the User with PAM
  If pam_open_session is activated, the Agent calls pam_setcred() which is loading the User credentials
  According to the PAM documentation this includes the User Limits configured in in /etc/security/limits.conf

2. After the authorization process the Agent creates a Child process using the system api call fork()

3. the following Variables are updated immediately afterwards
 - LOGNAME copied from parent process and updated
 - LOGIN copied from parent process and updated
 - USER copied from parent process and updated
 - PWD copied from parent process and updated
 - SHELL copied from parent process and updated
 - HOME copied from parent process and updated
 - MAIL copied from parent process and updated
 - PATH copied from parent process, :sbin:/usr/sbin is appended
 - LANG copied from parent process
 - HZ copied from parent process
 - TERM copied from parent process
 - NETPATH copied from parent process
 - NLSPATH copied from parent process
 - TZ copied from parent process

4. if PAM is configured
 a. Child Process loads the Environment Variables of the User and applies them to the job
 b. Child Process starts pam_open_session()
  This creates a PAM-Session for the Jobs, please pay attention to the configured PAM-Session-Handling in UNIX/LINUX

5. Child Process starts the Job with the API call execle()

6. if a shell in 'login mode' (-bash, -ksh -- prefix '-' stands for login mode) is configured the Child process loads the environment.

 - e.g. for Korn Shell this would be /etc/profile and .profile from the home directory

 - Another way to open a shell in login mode is to use '-l'  in the shell options of the task.

 

 

7. Now settings from UC_SHELL_UNIX are applied.

8. Everything else is part of the job, you could use Headers or Trailers to set Variables, but thats part of the Job and not Agent functionality