JP2003216456A - Agent system and message destination setting method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To automatically generate a trap message notification destination by an agent without a need to provide a special automatic setting means for a trap message by a manager. <P>SOLUTION: The agent 101 is composed of a manager identification information recognizing part 103 taking out manager identification information for automatically setting the destination for the trap message from a request message sent from the manger to the agent, a manager identification information propriety determining part 104 determining whether or not the recognized manager identification information can be registered as the trap message destination, a system information replying part 107 sending back system information requested by the manger, and a trap message issuing part 108 issuing the trap message. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an agent system and a message destination setting method, and more particularly to an agent computer connected to a network (hereinafter referred to as "agent computer").
The present invention relates to an agent system that facilitates setting a trap message destination from a manager computer (hereinafter simply referred to as a manager) to a manager computer and a message destination setting method in the agent.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Generally, an agent has a function of executing processing based on autonomous judgment, can provide high-level services on a network, and performs processing like a department server. . In addition, the manager has a function of managing the entire system and causes the agent to perform specified processing. The agent system is composed of a plurality of managers and a plurality of agents which are distributed in a global spread on the network, and the agents are distributed and arranged in a spread of the world. It corresponds to the request from the manager. Multiple managers in a system such as the one described above are activated or deactivated based on the time of day in the country in which they are located.

In an agent system configured by connecting a plurality of managers and a plurality of agents as described above to each other, each agent operates as a manager of the other party who notifies the abnormality as a trap message when an abnormality occurs. You need to determine which manager is in a state and notify that manager with trap messages. Then, the destination of the manager for that purpose is set manually on each agent side, or according to
As described in JP-A-172433, the setting is made by the trap message notification destination setting message transmitted from the manager.

[0004]

The prior art described in the above-mentioned publication makes it possible to reduce the work of manually setting the "abnormality notification destination address" of the agent, but Therefore, a special automatic setting means is required, and there is a problem that the work of setting the "abnormality notification destination address" in the case of a manager and an agent not provided with the automatic setting means cannot be reduced. .

An object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, and the agent automatically generates the trap message notification destination even when the manager is not provided with a special trap message automatic setting means. It is to provide an agent system and a message destination setting method that enable the above.

[0006]

According to the present invention, the object is to provide an agent system in which a plurality of manager computers and one or a plurality of agent computers are connected via a network. This is achieved by providing means for extracting the identification information of the manager computer from the request message from each of the manager computers and means for storing the extracted identification information as the destination of the trap message.

In the above description, the agent computer includes means for calculating the number of destinations of trap messages, manages the number of destinations of trap messages registered in the means for storing the destinations of trap messages, and The registration time of the destination stored in the means for storing the destination is referred to, and the destination after a predetermined time has elapsed after registration is deleted.

[0008]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of an agent system and a message destination setting method according to the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an agent system according to an embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, 101 is an agent, 102 is a request receiving unit from a manager, 103 is a manager identification information recognition unit, 104 is a manager identification information availability determination unit, 10
5 is a request information authentication function unit, 106 is a destination number determination function unit, 107 is a system information response unit, 108 is a trap message issuing unit, 109 is an access permission information DB, 1
10 is a system information DB, 111 is a trap message destination information DB, 112 is a network, 113, 114
Is a manager.

As shown in FIG. 1, an agent system according to an embodiment of the present invention comprises an agent 101 and a plurality of managers 113 and 114 connected to a network 112. Managers 113 and 114
As described in the section of the prior art, they are distributed and arranged with a global spread, and various processing requests are made to the agent 101 to request the processing. Also, these managers 113, 114 are activated or stopped based on the time of day in the country in which they are located. Each manager is, for example, in the country's time, from 9 am to 5 pm, and is inactive at other times. Also, the agent 101 receives requests from a plurality of managers and performs processing without stopping 24 hours a day. Although only one agent and two managers are shown in FIG. 1, there may be many of them.

The agent 101 includes a request receiving unit 102 from a manager, a manager identifying information recognizing unit 103, a manager identifying information availability determining unit 104 having a request information authenticating function unit 105 and a destination number determining function unit 106, and a system. The information response unit 107 and the trap message issuing unit 108 are provided, and the access permission / inhibition information DB 109, the system information DB 110, and the trap message destination information DB 111 are connected.

In the above description, in the request receiving unit 102 from the manager, the agent 101 is the manager 1
The request message for the system information or the like is received from 13, 114, and the manager identification information recognition unit 103 extracts the identification information for identifying the managers 113, 114 from the request message from the manager.

Manager identification information availability determination unit 104
Has a request information authentication function unit 105 and a destination number determination function unit 106, and determines whether or not to use the manager identification information as the trap message notification destination of the agent 101. The trap message is a message that is notified asynchronously from the agent 101 to the managers 113 and 114, and is, for example, a message that notifies a failure that has occurred inside the agent. The processing operations of the request information authentication function unit 105 and the destination number determination function unit 106 will be described later with reference to the flows shown in FIGS. The access permission / prohibition information DB 109 referred to by the request authentication function unit 105 will be described later with reference to FIG.

The system information responding unit 107 reads information corresponding to the system information ID specified in the request message from the managers 113 and 114 from the system information DB 110, and adds the read value to the message in the manager. To respond. The system information DB 110 described above will be described later with reference to FIG. 7.

The trap message issuing unit 108 performs a process of issuing a trap message for notifying an event that occurred asynchronously in the agent 101 to the managers 113 and 114. Trap message issuing unit 108
The processing operation of will be described later with reference to the flow shown in FIG. The trap destination DB 111 referred to by the trap message issuing unit 108 will be described with reference to FIG.
The trap message issued by the agent 101 will be described later with reference to FIG. 9, and a display example of the trap message on the manager will be described later with reference to FIG.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart for explaining the processing operation for determining whether access is possible in the request information authentication function unit 105, which will be described next.

(1) An authentication information DB not shown in FIG. 1 is obtained by analyzing a request message from the manager received by the request reception unit 102 from the manager, extracting authentication information such as a password and access permission information.
Authentication is performed by determining whether the correspondence between the accessing manager's information and its password is correct. If not, the access is considered invalid and the request is discarded and processed. finish. In addition,
The manager authentication information recognition unit 103 may perform the manager authentication process using the authentication information such as the password (steps 201, 202, 206).

(2) If the authentication is performed in the determination in step 202, one line of access permission / prohibition information is read from the access permission / prohibition information DB 109, and whether or not the access permission / prohibition information exists, that is, the access permission / prohibition information DB 109 It is determined whether or not the processing of all the lines has been completed, and if completed, the request message is discarded and the processing ends (steps 203, 204, 206).

(3) If it is determined in step 204 that the access permission / denial information exists, the access permission / denial information included in the request message is the access permission / denial information DB1.
It is determined whether or not it matches the access permission information read from 09 (step 205).

(4) If no match is obtained in the determination in step 205, there is a possibility that the access permission / prohibition information to be read remains in the access permission / prohibition information DB 109. Therefore, the processing returns to step 203 and the next access is performed. The process from the process of reading the availability information is repeated, and step 20
In the case of the judgment of 5, if the access permission information matches,
Then, the process ends.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart for explaining the processing operation of the trap message destination information registration period check in the destination number determination function unit 106 of the manager identification information availability determination unit 104, which will be described next. In this process, as described above, the operating time of the manager within a day is a fixed time, for example, about 8 hours, so the time from the last time the destination information is registered is monitored and fixed. For managers who have not accessed for a period of time,
This is a process of deleting the destination information for the manager, assuming that the manager has been in the dormant state after the operating time has elapsed, and is a process that is started at a fixed time interval or when the manager identification information is acquired by the manager identification information recognition unit 103. is there.

(1) When the trap message destination information registration period check is started, first, the agent 101
A trap message destination registration period stored in a memory (not shown) therein is read, and one row is read from a trap destination information DB 111 described later with reference to FIG. 8 (steps 301 and 302).

(2) It is determined whether or not there is an entry of a destination to be read in the trap destination information DB 111, that is, it is determined whether or not all the lines in the trap destination information DB 111 have been processed, If you're done,
The process here is terminated (step 303).

(3) If it is determined in step 303 that the line to be read exists, the manager identification information registration time of that line is taken out, and the identification information registration time is the current time minus the registration period read in step 301. It is compared whether it is smaller than the time (step 304).

(4) If the identification information registration time is smaller than the time obtained by subtracting the registration period from the current time in the comparison in step 304, the manager identification information is registered before the registration period. , That line is already stopped and it is no longer necessary to send the trap message, delete that line, and step 30
Returning to the processing from 2, the next line of the trap destination information DB 111 is read and the processing is continued (step 305).

(5) If the identification information registration time is greater than the time obtained by subtracting the registration period from the current time in the comparison in step 304, the identification information of the manager is within the registration period, and therefore the line is not deleted. Returning to the processing from step 302, the next line of the trap destination information DB 111 is read and the processing is continued.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart for explaining the processing operation for determining the number of destinations in the destination number determining function unit 106 of the manager identification information availability determining unit 104. Next, this will be described. This process is a process for limiting the number of destinations to be stored in the trap message destination DB to a predetermined number, whereby the processing load of the agent can be reduced. In addition, this process is shown in FIG.
This is a process that is executed subsequent to the process described in.

(1) Call the trap message destination information registration period check and perform the processing described with reference to FIG.
The trap destination information whose registration period has expired is deleted from the trap destination information DB 111 (step 401).

(2) It is searched whether the manager identification information acquired by the manager identification information recognition unit 103 is registered in the trap message destination information DB 111, and it is determined whether or not the manager identification information is already registered in the trap message destination. If it has already been registered, the registration time of the corresponding line in the trap message destination information DB 111 is rewritten to the current time and the process ends (steps 402 and 40).
7).

(3) If it is determined in step 402 that the trap message destination of the manager is not registered, the number of trap message destinations registered in the trap message destination information DB 111 is acquired (step 403).

(4) Next, the maximum number of trap message destinations that can be registered, which is stored in the memory or the like of the agent 101, is read, and the number of destinations already registered in the trap message destination DB and the trap message destinations can be registered. If the number of destinations in the trap message destination DB is larger than the maximum number of trap message destinations that can be registered, the manager identification information recognition unit 103 is compared.
Since it is not possible to register the destination information for the manager having the manager identification information acquired in step 3, the individual processing is terminated (steps 404 and 405).

(5) In step 405, if the number of destinations in the trap message destination DB is smaller than the maximum number of trap message destinations that can be registered, the manager identification information acquired by the manager identification information recognition unit 103 and the current time And are additionally registered in the trap message destination information DB, and the process ends.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart for explaining the processing operation of the trap message issuing unit 108, which will be described next. This process is a process of notifying the manager of an event such as an abnormality that has occurred asynchronously in the agent 101, and is activated when the event occurs.

(1) When an event such as an abnormality occurs, first,
The trap message destination information registration period check described above is called, and the trap destination information whose registration period has expired is deleted from the trap destination information DB 111 (step 50).
1).

(2) Next, the trap destination information DB 111
One line of the trap destination information is read from the table to determine whether the trap destination information exists, that is, the trap destination information DB
It is determined whether or not the processing for all the rows of 111 has been completed, and if there is no trap destination information, the processing is completed (steps 502 and 503).

(3) If the trap destination information exists in the determination in step 503, the trap message is notified to the manager indicated by the manager identification information, the process returns to step 502, and the next trap destination information DB is searched. Line is read and processing is continued (step 504).

FIG. 6 is a diagram for explaining the structure of the access permission / prohibition information DB. The access propriety information DB is number 601
Access permission information 602 and access level 603
Consists of. The number 601 is the number of each line and is assigned in order from 1. The access permission / prohibition information 602 is like a watchword between the manager and the agent. The manager adds the access permission / prohibition information 602 to the request message to make a request to the agent. The agent 101 permits access to the system information if the access permission / denial information matches the access permission / denial information in the access permission / denial information DB of the agent 101. The access level 603 defines the level at which the manager's request message including the access permission / prohibition information of the entry accesses the system information. In the example shown, as its value, "read-only",
Two values, "read-write", are specified. “Read
"-only" can read only the system information, and "read-write" can read and write the system information. In the line 604 of number 1, the access permission information 602 is "public". Yes, the system information can only be read in. In the line 605 with the number 2, the access permission / prohibition information 602 is "secret", and the system information can be read and written.

FIG. 7 is a diagram for explaining the configuration of the system information DB. The system information DB includes a number 701, an object ID 702, and a value 703. Number 701
Is the number of each line and is assigned in order from 1. The object ID 702 is a number for identifying system information, and the value 703 is a value of system information. In the row 704 having the number 1, the object ID 702 is “.1.1.3.6.
1.1 ”and the value 703 is“. system001 ”.
This value is the computer name of the agent 101. In the row 705 with the number 2, the object ID is “.
It is 3.6.1.2 "and its value is" main building 5F ". This value is the installation location of the agent 101.

FIG. 8 is a diagram for explaining the structure of the trap message destination information DB. Trap message destination DB
Includes a number 801, manager identification information 802, and registration time 803. The number 801 is the number of each line and is assigned in order from 1. Manager identification information 802
Is information for identifying the manager, and the registration time 803 is the time when the line was registered. The row 804 of number 1 indicates that “172.16.49.20” is registered as the manager identification information at the time “20.01.31”, and the row 805 of number 2 indicates the time “20.01.31”.
"0.04.14" and "17" as the manager identification information.
2.16.68.10 ”is registered.

FIG. 9 is a diagram for explaining the contents of the trap message. The trap message includes a destination address 901 that is destination identification information, a source address 902 that is source identification information, a trap number 903, and an occurrence time 9
04 and additional information 905. Destination address 90
1 is the destination of the manager sending the trap message. The source address 902 is the address of the agent that transmitted this trap message. The trap number 903 is a number indicating the type of trap, and the number and its meaning are defined in advance by the manager and the agent. The generation time 904 is the time of the agent that generated this message, and the additional information 905 is the character or number added to the trap number.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a screen display example of the trap message in the manager. The screen display includes an occurrence time 1001, a computer name 1002, and a message 1003. The occurrence time 1001 indicates the time when the manager receives the trap message from the agent. The computer name 1002 indicates the agent that issued the trap message. Message 1
003 is a message corresponding to the trap number in the received trap message, and displays a message in which the manager has created a correspondence table between the trap number in the trap message and the message.

Each processing according to the above-described embodiment of the present invention can be configured as a processing program, and this processing program is HD, DAT, FD, MO, DVD-.
It can be provided by being stored in a recording medium such as a ROM or a CD-ROM.

According to the above-described embodiment of the present invention, since the agent can automatically set the destination of the trap message by the request message for the system information from the manager, the manager sets the destination of the trap message to the agent. No special means for setting the destination of the trap message is required, and the agent side can reduce the work of manually setting the destination of the trap message.

[0044]

As described above, according to the present invention, the agent can automatically generate the trap message notification destination even if the manager is not provided with a special trap message automatic setting means.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an agent system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a processing operation for determining whether or not access is possible in a request information authentication function unit.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating a processing operation of a trap message destination information registration period check in a destination number determination function unit of a manager identification information availability determination unit.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating a processing operation of a destination number determination in a destination number determination function unit of a manager identification information availability determination unit.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a processing operation of a trap message issuing unit.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of an access permission / prohibition information DB.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a system information DB.

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a trap message destination information DB.

FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating the content of a trap message.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a screen display example of a trap message in the manager.

[Explanation of symbols]

101 Agent 102 Request receiver from manager 103 manager identification information recognition unit 104 Manager identification information availability determination unit 105 Request Information Authentication Function Unit 106 Address number determination function unit 107 System Information Response Unit 108 Trap message issuing section 109 Access permission information DB 110 System information DB 111 Trap message destination information DB 112 network 113, 114 manager

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. In an agent system in which a plurality of manager computers and one or a plurality of agent computers are connected via a network, the agent computer is configured to detect the manager computer from a request message from each of the plurality of manager computers. An agent system comprising: means for retrieving identification information; and means for storing the retrieved identification information as a destination of a trap message. 2. The agent computer comprises means for calculating the number of destinations of trap messages, and manages the number of destinations of trap messages registered in the means for storing the destinations of trap messages. The agent system according to item 1. 3. The destination for which the number of destinations of the trap message is calculated refers to the registration time of the destination stored in the means for storing the destination of the trap message, and the destination after a predetermined time has elapsed after registration The agent system according to claim 2, wherein the agent is deleted. 4. A message destination setting method in an agent computer of an agent system in which a plurality of manager computers and one or more agent computers are connected via a network,
The message destination setting method, wherein the agent computer extracts the identification information of the manager computer from the request message from each of the plurality of manager computers, and registers the extracted identification information as the destination of the trap message. 5. The agent computer calculates the number of destinations of trap messages, manages the number of destinations of trap messages to be registered, and refers to the registration time of the registered destination to determine a predetermined number after registration. 5. The message destination setting method according to claim 4, wherein the destination whose time has passed is deleted.