Installing and starting dispatchers

Dispatchers are agents that work on top of another protocol. By using dispatchers you avoid installing and running a dispatcher agent on each managed server. Instead, a central dispatcher communicates with targets, using the Network Shell (NSH) protocol or other protocols—such as SSH, Chef, or Puppet—to perform the actual automation tasks on those targets. However, ensure that on each managed server you installed protocol-specific agents (for example, for the NSH protocol—RSCD agents, for the SSH protocol—openSSHd agents, etc.) 

This topic contains the following information: 

• Starting and stopping the dispatcher
• Controlling the dispatcher user

Locate the appropriate installer in the install directory as follows:

• Windows systems dispatcher installer: 
  <BMC VaraLogix Q Deployment Automation installation folder>/releases/<product version>/Q/install/dispatch_setup.exe.
  All Windows releases use the same installer. On Windows platforms, server updates are loaded into the console and all remote systems are updated automatically. Windows servers support UTF8 and double-byte code pages for international languages.
• UNIX-based systems dispatcher installer: 
  <BMC VaraLogix Q Deployment Automation installation folder>/releases/<product version>/Q/install/dispatcher_linux.tar.gz.

To install the dispatcher on another computer without using the product installation program, copy the appropriate setup program to the target computer and run it there. For more information, see Reinstalling the dispatcher.

Starting and stopping the dispatcher

To start a dispatcher:

• In Windows: Navigate to Windows Services, select BMC Release Lifecycle Manager - Dispatcher, and click Start.
• In UNIX: From a shell command prompt, run service bmcrlm-dispatcher start.

To stop a dispatcher:

• In Windows: Navigate to Windows Services, select BMC Release Lifecycle Manager - Dispatcher, and click Stop.

• In UNIX: From a shell command prompt, run service bmcrlm-dispatcher stop.

Controlling the dispatcher user

By default, a dispatcher runs as root or the Administrator user on the computer where it is installed. It runs commands as that user, and any files it creates are owned by that user.

To change this default, you have the following options:

• Change the service configuration for the dispatcher (use xinetd on UNIX or Services on Windows) to start the dispatcher as a specific user.
   In this case, the dispatcher always runs actions as the specified user and ignores the VL_USER property.
• For UNIX-based systems only: On the channel template or channel, set VL_USER to the user name that the dispatcher will assume when running. The value must be a valid user on the target computer. In this case, the dispatcher starts as root or Administrator but changes to the specified account before doing any real work. If no VL_USER value is set, commands run as root or Administrator.

Because different properties can be defined on each channel, multiple connections to a physical computer can all run as different users. If the dispatcher cannot validate the VL_USER account name, it cancels the command. No password is needed. Because the dispatcher is already root or Administrator, it does not need a password to become a lesser user.