Managing Broadband Access Center

This chapter describes the various subcomponents within Broadband Access Center (BAC) that you can use to manage the system. These include:

BAC Process Watchdog

The BAC process watchdog is an administrative process that monitors the runtime health of all BAC processes. This watchdog process ensures that, if a process stops unexpectedly, it is automatically restarted. One instance of the BAC process watchdog runs on every system which runs BAC components.

You can use the BAC watchdog as a command-line tool to start, stop, restart, and determine the status of any monitored processes.

If a monitored application fails, it restarts automatically. If, for any reason, the restart process also fails, the BAC watchdog process server will wait a prescribed amount of time before attempting to restart again.

The period between restart attempts starts at 1 second and increases exponentially with every subsequent attempt until it reaches a length of 5 minutes. After that, the process restart is attempted at 5-minute intervals until successful. Five minutes after a successful restart, the period is automatically reset to 1 second again.

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The BAC process watchdog server attempts to restart it and the first restart fails.

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The BAC process watchdog server waits 2 seconds and attempts to restart the process and the second restart fails.

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The BAC process watchdog server waits 4 seconds and attempts to restart the process and the third restart fails.

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The BAC process watchdog server waits 16 seconds and attempts to restart the process.

Using BAC Process Watchdog from the Command Line

The BAC watchdog agent automatically starts whenever the system boots up. Consequently, this watchdog also starts those BAC system components installed on the same system. You can also control the BAC watchdog through a simple command-line utility by running the /etc/init.d/bprAgent command.

Table 9-1 describes the command line interface commands available for use with the BAC watchdog process.

Table 9-1 BAC Watchdog Agent CLI Commands
Command	Description
bprAgent start	Starts the BAC watchdog agent, including all monitored processes.
bprAgent stop	Stops the BAC watchdog agent, including all monitored processes.
bprAgent restart	Restarts the BAC watchdog agent, including all monitored processes.
bprAgent status	Gets the status of the BAC watchdog agent, including all monitored processes.
bprAgent start process-name	Starts one particular monitored process. The value process-name identifies that process.
bprAgent stop process-name	Stops one particular monitored process. The value process-name identifies that process.
bprAgent restart process-name	Restarts one particular monitored process. The value process-name identifies that process.
bprAgent status process-name	Gets the status of one particular monitored process. The value process-name identifies that process.
The process-name mentioned in Table 9-1 can be: •rdu—Specifies the RDU server. •dpe—Specifies the DPE server. •snmpAgent—Specifies the SNMP agent. •tomcat—Specifies the administrator user interface. •cli— Specifies the DPE command line interface.

Note When the Solaris operating system is rebooted, the BAC process watchdog is first stopped, allowing BAC servers to shut down properly. To shut down or reboot the operating system, use the Solaris shutdown command. Remember, the Solaris reboot command does not execute application shutdown hooks and kills BAC processes rather than shuts them down. While this action is not harmful to BAC, it may delay server start-up and skew certain statistics and performance counters.

The events that trigger an action in the BAC watchdog daemon, including process crashes and restarts, are logged in a log file, BPR_HOME/agent/logs/agent.log. The watchdog daemon also logs important events to syslog under standard local6 facility.

Administrator User Interface

The BAC administrator user interface is a web-based application for central management of the BAC system. You can use this interface to:

Command Line Interface

The BAC CLI is an IOS-like command line interface which you use to configure as well as view the status of the DPE by using Telnet or SSH. The CLI supports built-in command help and command autocompletion.

You can enable authentication of the CLI through a locally configured login and enable passwords, or through a remote username and password for a TACACS+ service.

To access the DPE CLI, open a Telnet session to port 2323 from a local or remote host.

Accessing the DPE CLI from a Local Host

Accessing the DPE CLI from a Remote Host

Note If you cannot establish a Telnet connection to the CLI, the CLI server might not be running. You may need to start the server; enter:
# /etc/init.d/bprAgent start cli

After you access the CLI, you must enter the DPE password to continue. The default login and enable passwords are changeme.

See the Cisco Broadband Access Center DPE CLI Reference, Release 3.0, for specific information on the CLI commands that a DPE supports.

SNMP Agent

BAC provides basic SNMP v2-based monitoring of the DPE and RDU servers. The BAC SNMP agents support SNMP informs and traps. You can configure the SNMP agent on the DPE by using the snmp-server CLI commands, and on the RDU by using SNMP configuration CLI commands.

The SNMP agent also provides support for monitoring essential BAC details, such as server state, server-specific statistics, communication between servers, and license information.

For additional information on the SNMP configuration command line tool, see Monitoring Broadband Access Center, page 11-1. For additional information on the DPE CLI, refer to the Cisco Broadband Access Center DPE CLI Reference, Release 3.0.

BAC Tools

BAC provides automated tools that you use to perform certain functions more efficiently. Table 9-2 lists the various tools that this BAC release supports:

Table 9-2 List of BAC Tools
Tool	Description	Refer ...
Configuration Tool	Used to test, validate, and view BAC template and configuration files.	Using the Configuration Utility, page 5-20
BAC Process Watchdog	Interacts with the BAC watchdog daemon to observe the status of the BAC system components, and stop or start servers.	Using BAC Process Watchdog from the Command Line
SNMP Agent Configuration Tool	Manages the SNMP agent.	Using the snmpAgentCfgUtil.sh Tool, page 11-5
RDU Log Level Tool	Sets the log level of the RDU, and enables or disables debugging log output.	The RDU Log Level Tool, page 19-6
Device Export Tool	Retrieves device information from the BAC backup database and exports the information to a flat file.	Using the deviceExport.sh Tool
Disk Space Monitoring Tool	Sets threshold values for one or more file systems. When these thresholds are surpassed, an alert is generated until additional disk space is available.	Using the disk_monitor.sh Tool
Keytool Utility	Manages certificates in a certificate store in support of HTTP over SSL services on the DPE.	Configuring DPE Keystore by Using the Keytool

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