Running the Agent as a service v1.2

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For continuous metric streaming and to ensure your database remains visible in your Hybrid Manager (HM) estate, configure the EDB Postgres AI agent (formerly called HM or beacon agent) to run as a service. This allows the EDB Postgres AI agent to start automatically on system startup and restart after any errors.

If you don't set up the agent as a service, it will stream metrics only when you manually run it. Furthermore, your database will disappear from your HM estate 72 hours after the agent stops streaming.

Ensure you've completed agent installation and configuration before setting it up as a service.

Note

Future versions of the agent package may set this up automatically.

This example configures EDB Postgres AI agent to run on an RHEL 9 machine. However, we provide operating system aids so you know when to replace the values.

Environment variables

You must ensure that any environment variables referenced in the agent configuration file are accessible to the service at runtime.

  1. Create a file using your text editor of choice. This example command uses the vi editor:

    sudo vi /usr/lib/systemd/system/beacon-agent.service

    Other default system directories on AWS EC2 instances are:

    Operating systemDefault system directory
    RHEL/usr/lib/systemd/system/beacon-agent.service
    Rocky Linux/usr/lib/systemd/system/beacon-agent.service
    AlmaLinux/usr/lib/systemd/system/beacon-agent.service
    Ubuntu/etc/systemd/system/beacon-agent.service
    Debian/lib/systemd/system/beacon-agent.service

  2. Paste the following template into the created beacon-agent.service file and replace the information in placeholders < >.

    # TEMPLATE

[Unit]
Description=Agent

After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple

User=<user>

WorkingDirectory=</home/user/>
Environment="PATH=</path/to/Oracle/db/binary>:</Oracle/user/binaries>:</system/binaries>" # e.g. /u01/app/oracle/product/19.0.0/dbhome_1/bin:/home/oracle/.local/bin:/home/oracle/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin
Environment="ORACLE_HOME=</path/to/Oracle/db/binary>" # e.g. /u01/app/oracle/product/19.0.0/dbhome_1

ExecStart=</usr/local/bin/beacon-agent>

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=60

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
    Service settingsPlaceholder to replaceGuidelines
    User=<user>Provide the name of the system user that will run the agent.
    WorkingDirectory=</home/user/>Set the working directory to where you stored the .beacon directory. The path depends on the operating system.
    Environment="PATH=</path/to/Oracle/db/binary>:</Oracle/user/binaries>:</system/binaries>"Set to all user and system directories that contain Oracle-related executables to ensure the agent can use sqlplus for schema extraction during runtime.
    Environment="ORACLE_HOME=</path/to/Oracle/db/binary>"Set to the directory of the Oracle database executables to enable sqlplus to extract schemas.
    ExecStart=</usr/local/bin/beacon-agent>Provide the path to the directory where the agent was installed. The path depends on the operating system.

  3. Run the following commands to reload, enable, and start your new service. These commands apply to all mentioned operating systems:

    sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable beacon-agent.service
sudo systemctl start beacon-agent.service

  4. Your agent is now running as a service. Check on the logs:

    journalctl -u beacon-agent.service
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