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Important This documentation space contains information about the on-premises version of BMC Helix Discovery. If you are using the SaaS version of BMC Helix Discovery, see BMC Helix Discovery (SaaS).

Using command line utilities

BMC Discovery provides utilities that you can run on a command line interface to configure Discovery by obtaining information from specific systems.

All the utilities are located in the /usr/tideway/bin directory and are named tw_utilityname.

Error
Warning

All command line utilities that are supported in BMC Discovery are documented in this section. Any utility that is not documented in this section is an explicitly unsupported tool.

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Related topics

Administering

Managing security policies

Duplicate or enhanced functionality in user interface

Many of the utilities perform functions that are already part the BMC Discovery user interface, and might duplicate what you might be able to accomplish more easily in the best-practice use of the product. Most of the configuration you perform will be done using the Discovery Configuration page accessed from the Administration tab; however, the functionality might be located in other areas of the product. Documentation for each utility in this section includes a link to the corresponding location in the user interface where you can perform the intended function.

Information
Note

Although command line utilities offer a potentially faster or more convenient way to perform a specific function, they might also cause unintended consequences that might compromise your environment if not used carefully.

When using command line utilities, particularly long-running processes such as tw_ds_offline_compact it is recommended that you use the screen utility to prevent any problems that might arise from dropped connections. An example of using screen is shown in the tw_ds_offline_compact documentation. Using-screen provides more detailed information on screen and links to online resources.

Common options in the utilities

In each utility, you can specify options, or arguments, that enable you to specify what action you want the utility to perform. For many of the utilities, several options are inherited and their basic purpose does not change. In this section, common options are not described for each utility because they are not typically used.

The following table lists the common options that are inherited by many of the command line utilities available with BMC Discovery.

Common Command Line Option

Description

-h, --help

Displays the required use of the utility and describes the available options

--logbackupcount=NUM

Specifies the number of backup logs files that are preserved

--logfile=FILE

Specifies the log file that log messages are written to

--loglevel=LEVEL

Specifies the logging level as one of the following values:

  • debug—Logs all messages
  • info—Logs critical, error, warning, and information messages
  • warn—Logs critical, error, and warning messages
  • error—Logs critical and error messages
  • crit—Logs only critical messages
--passwordfile=FILE

Specifies a file from which the password is to be read. This is only relevant for utilities that have the --username option. This file is not encrypted, though you can set the file permissions to owner-only (chmod 600 passwordfile.txt) to restrict access to the file. For more information about password policies, see Managing-security-policies.

-p, --password=PASSWD

Specifies the password of the BMC Discovery user. If no password is specified, you are prompted for one. This is only relevant for utilities that have the --username option. For more information about password policies, see Managing-security-policies.

-u, --username

The user to run the utility as. This has to be a valid BMC Discovery UI user such as the system user, not a username used to access the command line via ssh.

-v, --version

Displays the BMC Discovery version number, copyright information, and the name of the utility

Error
Warning

You should not use any service utilities (those named tw_svc_name), because the improper use of a service-based command could have potentially adverse results on your system.

 

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BMC Helix Discovery 24.3 (On-Premises)