Starting an agent as a Windows service

You can start an agent as a Windows service so that when you log off Windows, your agent continues running and can receive file transfers.

1. If you are creating an MQMFT agent, use the fteCreateAgent, fteCreateWebAgent, fteCreateCDAgent, or fteCreateBridgeAgent command. Specify the -s parameter to run the agent as a Windows service. In the following example, the agent AGENT1 is created, which has an agent queue manager QMGR1. The Windows service runs using a user name of fteuser, which has an associated password ftepassword.

   
   fteCreateAgent -agentName AGENT1 -agentQMgr QMGR1 -s -su fteuser -sp ftepassword
   

   You can optionally specify a name for the service after the -s parameter. If you do not specify a name, the service is named mqmftAgent<AGENT><QMGR>, where AGENT is the agent name you specified and QMGR is your agent queue manager name. In this example, the default name for the service is mqmftAgentAGENT1QMGR1.

   Note: The Windows user account that you specify using the -su parameter must have the Log on as a service rights. For information about how to configure this, see Guidance for running an agent or logger as a Windows service.

   For more information, see fteCreateAgent (create an IBM MQ Managed File Transfer agent), fteCreateWebAgent (create an IBM MQ Managed File Transfer web agent), fteCreateCDAgent (create a Connect:Direct bridge agent), or fteCreateBridgeAgent (create and configure IBM MQ Managed File Transfer protocol bridge agent).

2. If you followed the previous step to create an agent, run the MQSC commands that are generated by the fteCreateAgent, fteCreateWebAgent, fteCreateCDAgent, or fteCreateBridgeAgent command. These commands create the WebSphere MQ queues that are needed by the agent.
   For example, for an agent named AGENT1, an agent queue manager named QMGR1 and a coordination queue manager named COORDQMGR1, run the following command:

   
   runmqsc QMGR1 <MQ_DATA_PATH>\mqft\config\COORDQMGR1\agents\AGENT1\AGENT1_create.mqsc
   

3. If you did not follow the previous steps to create an agent and instead want to configure an existing agent to run as a Windows service, first stop your agent if it is running, and then modify its configuration.
   1. The following example uses an agent named AGENT1. Run the following command:

      
      fteStopAgent AGENT1
      

   2. Use the fteModifyAgent command to configure the agent to run as a Windows service:

      
      fteModifyAgent -agentName AGENT1 -s -su fteuser -sp ftepassword
      

      For more information, see fteModifyAgent (modify a IBM MQ Managed File Transfer agent).
4. Start your agent using the fteStartAgent command. Alternatively, you can use the Windows Services tool, which is available from Administrative Tools in the Control Panel, selected from the Windows desktop start menu, to start the service.

   
   fteStartAgent AGENT1
   

   The service continues to run even if you log off Windows. To ensure that the service also restarts when Windows restarts after a shutdown, the Startup Type field in the Windows Services tool is set to Automatic by default. Change this to Manual if you do not want the service to restart when Windows restarts.

5. Optional: To stop the agent, either use the fteStopAgent command or use the Windows Services tool. For example, from the command line, run the following command:

   
   fteStopAgent AGENT1
   

   • When you run the fteStopAgent command as a service, the command always runs using the -i parameter regardless of whether you specified this parameter. The -i parameter stops the agent immediately without completing any transfers that are in progress. This is caused by a limitation of the Windows service.