Configuring Remote Agents with IAC

[Robert Kerr]

When standing up a new remote agent of a fixed name, Bamboo appends (2) to the name. We would like it to come up as a replacement of any previous agent of that same name. Can we accomplish this?

ex:  Remote agent name is "DEV-AGENT01W".  If we shut this down and bring up a new one of the same name, it registers as "DEV-AGENT01W (2)".

The replacement is also a unique agent from the original, so if we had dedicated certain deploy environments, that configuration does not apply to the new agent. We then have to rededicate plans to the new agent.

Would setting agentUuid to a crafted ID during agent build time be respected by the Bamboo server when the agent went to register, or does the server push it's own unique IDs down to the agent?

[Marcin Gardias]

Uuid of the agent is automatically generated when agent first starts, unless it is already found in the bamboo-agent.cfg.xml file.

The name and id of the agent is established when it first connects to the server.

Id is assigned by the server, it's a database id.

By default, the name is the hostname of the machine agent runs on, but if this name is already registered in Bamboo with a different id, a number is appended.

Once this data is defined, it is written to bamboo-agent.cfg.xml file in agent's home directory. If the agent reconnects, and the id and name are there, it will present itself as an existing agent. If data matches the data on the server, the agent's identity is accepted. If there's a mismatch 2 things can happen:

• agent connection is rejected (if agent auth. is on and UUID doesn't match the ID)
• agent is accepted as _new_ agent

To sum up:

What you need to do, is to make sure not to overwrite bamboo-agent.cfg.xml file when you re-connect the agent. You need to keep entire content, especially <id> <uuid> and <name>.

[Marcin Gardias]

In case of IAC, that probably means: launching an agent once, making a copy of the cfg file and making sure it is uploaded to the instance on startup.