Defining the FTP Agent

The FTP Agent lets you issue commands between your local file system and one or more remote FTP servers and between two remote FTP servers. The Agent definition consists of an FTP-specific page and other pages that are common to all Agents. This topic explains how to configure the FTP Agent.

Important!

You define the FTP Agent in Client 0, Automic Automation's administration Client. Go to the Administration perspective > Agents & Groups > Agents list and open the FTP Agent that you want to set the parameters for.

This page includes the following:

FTP Page

On the FTP page you can specify FTP proxy server settings and SOCKS proxy server settings for FTP Connection objects. You can also enable remote command executions for FTP Jobs.

FTP Proxy Server Settings

To use an FTP proxy server, fill in the following fields:

  • Type of FTP Proxy

    You have the following options:

    • None

      No FTP proxy server settings are used.

    • USER@HOST

      The FTP proxy server settings are used and the editable Commands for FTP Proxy field is pre-populated with the following.

      • USER __proxyUser__

      PASS __proxyPassword__

      USER __user__@__targetHost__

      PASS __password__

    • SITE

      The FTP proxy server settings are used and the editable Commands for FTP Proxy field is pre-populated with the following.

      • USER __proxyUser__

      PASS __proxyPassword__

      SITE __targetHost__

      USER __user__

      PASS __password__

    • OPEN

      The FTP proxy server settings are used and the editable Commands for FTP Proxy field is pre-populated with the following.

      • USER __proxyUser__

      PASS __proxyPassword__

      OPEN __targetHost__

      USER __user__

      PASS __password__

    • Custom

      The FTP proxy server settings are used and the editable Commands for FTP Proxy field starts empty.

    • If you select USER@HOST, SITE, or OPEN, you should not need to edit anything in the Commands for FTP Proxy field. However, if you need to, you can edit these commands and their values (where you can use hard-coded values instead of substitution variables).

  • IP Address

    • The FTP proxy IP address.

  • Port

    • The FTP proxy port.

    Commands for FTP Proxy

    The commands for the FTP proxy. The commands and values can be hard-coded or you can use the substitution variables shown below. Each substitution variable includes two underscores at the beginning and end of their name.

    If you select USER@HOST, SITE, or OPEN, you should not need to edit anything in the text box. However, if you need to, you can edit these commands and their values (where you can use hard-coded values instead of substitution variables) or you can start with nothing in the text box by selecting Custom.

    __user__

    Target host username

    __password__

    Target host password

    __targetHost__

    Target host name

    __proxyUser__

    Proxy username

    __proxyPassword__

    Proxy password

  • Username

    • The username (if required)

  • Password

    • The password (if required)

For each Connection object of protocol type FTP where you wish to use the FTP proxy server settings that you define here, activate the Use the FTP proxy server settings on its Connection object definition. For more information, see Connecting the FTP Agent to the FTP Servers.

TCP Proxy Settings

To use a TCP proxy server, fill in the following fields.

  • Type of Socks Proxy

    • You have the following options:

    • None

      No FTP proxy server settings are used.

    • HTTP

      The HTTP proxy server settings are used.

    • SOCKS4/SOCKS5

      The SOCKS proxy server settings are used.

  • IP Address

    • The SOCKS proxy IP address

  • Port

    • The SOCKS proxy port

  • Username

    • The username (if required)

  • Password

    • The password (if required)

For each Connection object of protocol type FTP where you wish to use the FTP proxy server settings that you define here, activate the Socks proxy, use server settings on its Connection object definition. For more information, see Connecting the FTP Agent to the FTP Servers.

When using a SOCKS proxy server for FTP, FTPS and FTPES protocols, you should also activate the Force active mode option in your Connection objects. If you use the default passive mode, the FTP Agent will not be able to connect to the FTP server causing your Jobs to fail.

SOCKS Protocol Support Settings

Note: The following documentation comes from Oracle and is included for reference. For updates or more information, see Oracle's web site/documentation.

The SOCKS user name and password are acquired in the following way. First, if the application has registered a java.net.Authenticator default instance. Then, this will be queried with the protocol set to the string "SOCKS5", and the PromptSet to the string "SOCKS authentication". If the authenticator does not return a username/password or if no authenticator is registered then the system checks for the user preferences "java.net.socks.username" and "java.net.socks.password". If these preferences do not exist, then the system property "user.name" is checked for a username. In this case, no password is supplied.

socksProxyHost

socksProxyPort (default: 1080)

Indicates the name of the SOCKS proxy server and the port number that will be used by the SOCKS protocol layer. If socksProxyHost is specified then all TCP sockets will use the SOCKS proxy server to establish a connection or accept one. The SOCKS proxy server can either be a SOCKS v4 or v5 server and it has to allow for unauthenticated connections.

Enabling Remote Command Execution

Users with the necessary security credentials can enable Remote Command commands for FTP Jobs by checking the Enable remote execution box. When this box is checked, you can run commands on the remote system. This is only supported for SSH to UNIX systems with a Connection object with SFTP selected as the protocol. You cannot use this for Windows and Telnet.

For security reasons, the Enable remote execution box is unchecked by default. When the Enable remote execution box is unchecked, users can add Remote Command commands to FTP Jobs, but they will fail when the Job is executed. When the Enable remote execution box is checked, FTP Jobs with Remote Command will run normally. For more information on Remote Command commands, see FTP Jobs: Remote Command Settings.

Common Definition Pages

Optionally, you can also specify additional parameters on the object definition pages that are common to all Agents, namely:

General

On this page you can assign the Agent a title, which is an alternative way to name it. You can also apply custom values (archive keys) that you can later use for filtering and you specify certain reporting settings.

Object Authorizations

On this page you can fine-tune the Agent's access and function rights at object level.

Important!

It is recommended to implement your user management policy at User Group level rather than at User or object level (Agents are also objects in Automic Automation). Read the User Management topics in the Automic Automation product documentation carefully before granting/removing rights at object level.

Agent

On the Agent page, you can specify the following:

  • Authorizations

    Here you grant the Agent the authorizations that you deem appropriate on the Clients to which it should have access.

  • Attributes Section - Trusted IPs

    If the communication with the Agent runs with encryption, you can specify the IP addresses from which the Agent accepts non-encrypted connections. They must be separated by semicolons.

    Releasing individual IP addresses is only reasonable if login attempts of former Agent versions should be rejected.

  • Service Manager Section

    These properties are necessary for the connection between the Agent and the Service Manager, an external monitoring tool that allows you to start and stop the Automation Engine and its components.

    The Service Manager comes with a proprietary user interface. If you want to use the AWI instead, you can do so provided you enter the necessary information.

For more information, see Agents (HOST).

Documentation

On this page you enter the information you consider important to understand the configuration and behavior of the object. By default, this page allows you to enter unstructured documentation. Automic Automation system administrators can configure how many documentation pages will be displayed and whether they can contain unstructured or structured documentation.

For more information, see the Automic Automation documentation at Defining the Common Object Properties.

Next Step

Once the Agent definition is done, you must authenticate the Agent, otherwise, you will not be able to start it. For more information, see Agent Authentication in the Automic Automation documentation.

See also: