After compiling the agent as explained in the section called Installation on Unix Systems in Chapter 13,
the executable of the NetSolve agent is located in:
$NETSOLVE_ROOT/bin/$NETSOLVE_ARCH/agent. |
The proper command line for this program is
agent [-a agent_name] [-l logfile]
When invoked with no arguments, a stand-alone agent is started.
This agent is now available for registrations of NetSolve servers
wanting to participate in a new NetSolve system. After servers
are registered, client programs can contact this agent and
have requests serviced by one or more of the registered servers.
 | Note: |
|---|
| | Only one NetSolve agent can be
running on a given machine at a given time. |
When the -a option is used, as in:
UNIX> agent -a netsolve.cs.utk.edu |
the new agent will register itself with
the agent running on the host specified by the agent_name argument.
If no agent is running on this host, the new agent will exit
with an appropriate error message. However, when it is able to
contact that agent, it will receive from that agent, a list of
servers (who have given the previous agent the permission to
broadcast their status, see
Chapter 15) and
possibly other agents. These servers then also become available
for the servicing of requests sent via the new agent.
The -l option specifies the name of a file to use for logging purposes.
UNIX> agent -l /home/me/agent_logfile |
This file is where the agent logs all of its interactions (and possibly errors)
since it is a daemon with no controlling terminal and therefore has no
way to do this otherwise. This log file also produces very useful
information about requests, among other things, that helps administrators
know how their NetSolve system is being used. If no
-l
option is
specified, the default log file is
$NETSOLVE_ROOT/nsagent.log. This means that successive runs of the agent with
no specification of a log file will overwrite the original log file,
so if the information is needed, it must be copied to another file.
To terminate an existing agent (or query an existing NetSolve system), the
user should refer to the NetSolve management tools, particularly
NS_killagent, as outlined in Chapter 16.