There are two watchdog monitors that run as part of the Monitoring Agent for UNIX. One monitor runs as part of the OS Monitoring Agent process, which is referred to as the Agent Watchdog. The other watchdog monitor runs as a separate process named 'kcawd'. The kcawd process is also called the Agent Management Services Watchdog. This watchdog monitor watches the OS Agent as long as its Availability Status is showing 'Running' in the Agent's Runtime Status view of the Agent Management Services workspace. No setup or configuration is required.
The Agent Watchdog monitors agent processes other than the OS Agent. By using the communication facility of the OS Agent, the monitor can respond to Tivoli® Enterprise Portal Desktop queries and Take Action commands that are performed against these other agent processes. This data is displayed in the Agent Management Services workspace. In the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Desktop, the Agent Management Services workspace lists the agents that can be monitored by this watchdog that is running as part of the OS Agent. These agents are non-OS agents, so the Monitoring Agent for UNIX is not listed in the workspace, except for in the Agents' Management Definitions view. One of the agents listed in the workspace is the Agent Management Services Watchdog. Its purpose is to monitor the OS Agent's availability.
The Agent Management Services Watchdog monitor is responsible for watching just the OS Monitoring Agent and restarting it if it goes down. It is enabled by default and does not need to be configured. It is started automatically when the Monitoring Agent for UNIX is started. This watchdog does not have a communication facility, so it cannot report information to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal or respond to Take Action commands. It is not an agent in itself, but a separate process that always monitors the OS Monitoring Agent.
You can temporarily disable the Agent Management Services Watchdog by using the InstallDir/bin/itmcmd execute ux disarmWatchdog.sh command. This command disables the Watchdog process for the OS Monitoring Agent and all Agent Management Services managed agents. If there is local administrative work to be performed, and you do not want the auto-restart of the agents to interfere with it, run the InstallDir/bin/itmcmd execute ux disarmWatchdog.sh command before proceeding. When the work is complete, recycle the OS Monitoring Agent to reenable Agent Management Services, or use the InstallDir/bin/itmcmd execute ux rearmWatchdog.sh command.
If you use the itmcmd interface to stop or start an Agent Management Services managed agent, its watchdog will be disabled if stopping the agent and enabled if starting the agent.