Hi everyone,
I’m looking for a relevance that can check the value of a flag file stored locally vs a flag file stored on a network location.
Basically, if local flag file = 0, check network flag file. If network flag file = anything more than 0, pull files from network location, and update local flagfile.
Let me know if anyone has any recommendations or suggestions.
Also, I’m pretty new to relevance, so not sure if this is possible.
This query would generate some network traffic each time it runs.
If you have lots of computers running this relevance frequently, you would be driving lots of network traffice to your network location. For this reason, relevance tends to not expose things that would generate external load.
For cases where the value of the information overrides the expense of the network load, you will probably want to use an Action instead of a Fixlet/Analysis to do the transaction.
Second issue - the BigFix client is running as Local System/Root. This account usually does not have any permissions to read from a network resource such as a file share.
I think your best way forward will likely be with a dynamic download inside of a BigFix action:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS63NW_9.2.0/com.ibm.tivoli.tem.doc_9.2/Platform/Action/c_dynamic_downloading.html
We are prepared to accept the network traffic hit - there is only going to be a small amount of data stored in the flagfiles for the purpose of determining when the action is relevant.
As brolly mentioned, you also need to handle the second point. You will either need to set up a null share (bad security) or configure the agent to run as a specific user. From what I recall, there are some capabilities in BigFix to use a “runas” but I have not had the time to look at it to see how it works.
I am curious as to why you want to pull files from a network share rather than deploy them with BigFix. There are big advantages to deploying with BigFix, but it could depend on where you are deploying.