GDMA Credentials

The credentials used by the deployed GDMA agents need to be managed so the calls to auto-registration and auto-setup can be properly authorized and succeed. By default, a new GroundWork server is configured to use the username gdma with password gdma. It is recommended to change the password regularly.

Change GDMA Password

This procedure introduces an issue that can impede upgrade to 8.2.0. Be sure to follow the instructions in Appendix A: Adjusting the foundation.properties file to correct this after changing the password. 

  1. To change the password for a GDMA account, as a user with the Admin role, go to Administration > Security.

  2. Under the section for GDMA Accounts, click Update and enter and confirm the new password.

Change GDMA Username

To change the GDMA username, you actually define a second one, with its own password. You can have two accounts active at the same time, which allows you to migrate the agent configurations to the new account periodically.

  1. Click Add GDMA Account and fill out the form fields Account Name, Account Password and Confirm Password, and Save.

Change Password and Username on the Agent

To change the password and user name on the agent, as root user, you can update the the following file on each agent:

/usr/local/groundwork/gdma/config/gdma_auto.conf

and change the parameters:

Auto_Register_Pass
Auto_Register_User 

to reflect the new values.

These parameters are in clear text, however, the file itself is restricted to superuser access only. We recommend using a configuration management tool such as Ansible or Puppet to manage large numbers of agents in this way.

Appendix A: Adjusting the foundation.properties File

The foundation.properties file is modified by this procedure in prior versions. A line is inserted at the end of the file that can cause an error on upgrade to 8.2.0. This error will give you the message:

Running migration 20201202-0-GROUNDWORK-1354-add-kafka-properties.sh...
Hunk 2 FAILED 222/222.

after which the upgrade will be cancelled, and the system will revert to using 8.1.3. You can recover from this but you must first adjust this file as follows. You can (and should) do this procedure prior to upgrading to avoid the issue. 

  1. Log in to the GroundWork server (Parent or Standalone, not Child), and change to the gw8 directory: 

    cd gw8
    CODE

  2. Edit the foundation.properties file: 

    docker-compose exec nagios vi /usr/local/groundwork/config/foundation.properties
    CODE

  3. Go to the end of the file (type G), and look for the last line. It should be: 

    status.update.queue.workers=4

  4. If it's not the line above, it means this procedure has modified it or another manual change was made. You can correct it by moving the following block to the end of the file, below any added lines: 

    ############################################################################
# Status Update Bus Queue
############################################################################
status.update.queue.name=/queue/status_update
status.update.queue.workers=4

    As long as that's the last thing in this file, the issue with upgrading to 8.2.0 will be avoided. 

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