geneos

geneos

The geneos command-line tool is your modern, unified solution for managing ITRS Geneos environments. It replaces older tools like gatewayctl and netprobectl with a single, intuitive interface.

Quick Links

📚 New to geneos? → Start with the Getting Started Guide (10 minutes)
📖 Ready to dive deeper? → Read the User Guide (comprehensive workflows)
📋 Need command reference? → Check the Quick Reference (cheat sheet)
🚀 Want examples? → Browse Usage Examples (real-world scenarios)
🗂️ Not sure which guide? → Check the Documentation Index (find the right guide)

[!IMPORTANT]

geneos is currently unable to manage ARM 64 releases as seen with Geneos 7.1. There is also a chance that installation or upgrade of existing gateway and licd packages on RHEL9 (only) could result in an aarch64 package being installed. We are working on ensuring this is not possible and will release a patch ASAP.

Why Use geneos?

🎯 Simplified Management

• One tool for all Geneos components (Gateways, Netprobes, License Daemons, etc.)
• Consistent syntax across all operations
• Intuitive commands that follow the Principle of least astonishment

🚀 Powerful Features

• Remote Operations: Manage instances across multiple servers from one location
• Legacy Compatible: Works with existing installations and emulates older commands
• Automation-Ready: Designed for scripting and integration with automation tools
• Template-Driven: Deploy consistent configurations across environments

✨ Key Capabilities

• Initialize new installations with a single command
• Download, install and update Geneos software
• Adopt existing installations created with older tools
• Manage certificates for secure TLS connections
• Create AES256 encoded passwords and manage credentials
• Deploy Self-Announcing and Floating Netprobes

Quick Start

Installation

# Download the latest version
mkdir -p ${HOME}/bin && cd ${HOME}/bin
curl -OL https://github.com/ITRS-Group/cordial/releases/latest/download/geneos
chmod +x ./geneos

# Add to PATH
export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

# Verify installation
geneos version

First Steps

# If you have existing Geneos installation
geneos config set geneos=/opt/itrs    # Point to your installation
geneos list                          # See what's configured
geneos ps                           # See what's running

# If starting fresh (requires ITRS account)
geneos init demo -u your-email@example.com

💡 Replace your-email@example.com with your registered email for downloading ITRS software. If you need to register go here

Next Steps

• Beginners: Follow the Getting Started Guide for a 10-minute walkthrough
• Experienced users: Jump into the User Guide for comprehensive workflows
• Quick reference: Bookmark the Quick Reference Guide for daily use

Adopting An Existing Installation

If you have a running Geneos environment and you currently use older ITRS tools like gatewayctl and netprobectl to manage it, then you can start using the new geneos program straight away. There are a couple of options, but the simplest is to tell geneos where the existing Geneos installation is:

geneos config set geneos=/path/to/geneos

The path you need to use above is the one with the bin directory that contains the existing gatewayctl etc., typically /opt/itrs or /home/geneos. If you happen to have an environment variable ITRS_HOME already set then you can skip the above step altogether. You can just try listing existing Geneos instances like this, without any risk of changes:

geneos list

If this works then you are all set.

Legacy Command Emulation

To help you migrate from older tools to geneos, the program will emulate the syntax of the older command (with some restrictions, such as no create command emulation) if invoked using the same names. This allows your users or existing automations to continue to work as before.

To back-up your old scripts and create the links to the new geneos program just run:

geneos migrate -X    # mnemonic: -X means "executables"

This will rename any *ctl programs for Geneos components to an .orig suffix and then create symbolic links to the current location of the geneos program.

To reverse this simply run:

geneos revert -X

This works by taking the first part of the executable name and mapping it to the component type, so for example a legacy command TYPEctl NAME COMMAND becomes geneos COMMAND TYPE NAME, e.g. gatewayctl all start is translated to geneos start gateway all.

The word all instead of a specific instance name is supported as per the original shell scripts.

Command Structure

For typical commands the command line will look something like this:

geneos COMMAND [flags] [TYPE] [NAMES...]

• COMMAND is the one or two word name of the command
• flags are dash or double-dash prefixed options. Many of these options will require arguments and the details for each command will be in the help text.
• TYPE is the optional component type
• NAMES is an optional list of instance names. They can have an optional @HOST suffix which restricts the match to only the configured HOST.

The overall goal when choosing command names and their flags/options has been to make things more intuitive, rather than less. This is not always possible and so some options will be different between commands while performing the same task; One examples is the -f (follow) flags for logs which has similar functionality to the -l (logs) flag for init commands.

Concepts & Terminology

We assumes some familiarity with the ITRS Geneos product family. Please take the time to review the Geneos Architecture documentation.

Many of the terms used by the geneos program have been inherited from earlier systems and may not be as intuitive as we would like.

Components

A Component is a stand-alone software release that forms one part of the ITRS Geneos product.

The currently supported Component types are listed in Recognised Component Types.

A Component can also refer to a specific variety of another parent Component type. The most common one is a Self-Announcing Netprobe which can be a variety of Netprobe or Fix Analyser 2 Netprobe.

Components are normally referred to as a TYPE in command help and documentation.

Components (more specifically the software releases that they are made up of) are managed through the package sub-system.

Instances

An Instance is a runnable copy of a Component. An Instance is made up of a working directory, a configuration file and other related files. The geneos utility uses these to manage the lifecycle of a Component independently of other Instances of the same Component TYPE.

Instances are referred to as NAME in the command help and documentation.

Each Instance must have a unique, case-insensitive, name for that Component TYPE and on that HOST (see below) and must not be one of the reserved names.

Reserved name are those that would be ambiguous on the command line and include Component names and the aliases, command names and their aliases and some special terms (such as all or any).

An Instance name can have a suffix that refers to the HOST it is located on in the form NAME@HOST. If not specified then commands will apply to all Instances of NAME across all hosts.

Hosts

A Host is the location that components are installed and can be managed. There is always a localhost. There is also a special all host keyword that is implied when no specific host is specified.

Normally commands will apply to all Hosts. Operations can be limited using the global option --host/-H for most commands.

Hosts are managed through the hosts sub-system.

Instance Protection

Individual instances can be protected again being stopped or deleted by setting the protected parameter.

geneos protect gateway IMPORTANT_GW

This also applies to any command that stops an instance, such as the more obvious ones like restart but also disable and others. The copy command, because it must be given the name for a source, does not check this setting. For most commands that check the protection setting before running there is a --force flag to override the protection. The delete command already requires that an instance be disabled or must be called with the --force flag.

If you run geneos delete -H HOSTNAME with the --stop flag to stop instance on the remote host first, then the protected settings is also checked and the command will terminate on the first error. This does however mean that unprotected instances on that host may have been stopped in the meantime.

The update command will not run if any protected instance is using the base link that would be updated.

Instance Settings

Every instance has a configuration file stored in it's directory. This is the most basic requirement for an instance. New instances that you create will have a configuration file named after the component type plus the file type extension .json. Older instances which you have adopted from previous scripts will have a configuration file with the extension .rc

JSON Configuration Files

The .json configuration files share common parameters as well as component type specific settings. For simplicity some of these parameters have different meanings depending on the component type they apply to.

While editing the configuration files directly is possible, it is best to use the set and unset commands to ensure the syntax is correct.

Special parameters

All instances support custom environment variables being set or unset. This is done through the set and unset commands.

Some component types, Gateways, SANs and Floating Netprobes, support other special parameters through options to the various commands that create or edit instance configurations. See the help text for the set and unset commands for more details as well as add and the init subsystem.

To set an environment variable use this syntax:

geneos set netprobe example1 -e PATH_TO_SOMETHING=/file/path

If an entry already exists it is overwritten.

To remove an entry, use unset, like this

geneos unset netprobe example1 -e PATH_TO_SOMETHING

You can specify multiple entries by using the flag more than once:

geneos set netprobe example1 -e JAVA_HOME=/path -e ORACLE_HOME=/path2

If the value of the environment variable contains spaces then use quotes to prevent those spaces being caught by the shell. In bash you can do any of these to achieve the same result:

geneos set netprobe example1 -e MYVAR="a string with spaces"
geneos set netprobe example1 -e "MYVAR=a string with spaces"

You can review the environment for any instance using the show command:

geneos show netprobe example1

Also, output is available from the command command to show what would be run when calling the start command:

geneos command netprobe example1

Other special parameters behave in similar ways. Please see the command documentation for details.

File and URLs

Most configuration file values support URLs, e.g. importing certificate and keys, license files, etc.

The primary exception is for Gateway include files used in templated configurations. If these are given as URLs then they are used in the configuration as URLs.

Legacy Configuration Files

Historical (i.e. legacy) .rc files have a simple format like this:

GatePort=1234
GateUser=geneos

Where the prefix (here: Gate) also implies the component type and the suffix (Port) is the parameter. Any lines that do not contain the prefix are treated as environment variables and are evaluated and passed to the program on start-up. Parameter values that contain environment variables in the format ${HOME} will be expanded at run time. If the configuration is migrated, either through an explicit geneos migrate command or if a setting is changes through geneos set or similar then the value of the environment variable will be carried over and continue to be expanded at run-time. The geneos show command can be passed a --raw flag to show the unexpanded values, if any.

While the geneos program can parse and understand the legacy .rc files above it will never update them, instead migrating them to their .json equivalents either when required or when explicitly told to using the migrate command.

For compatibility with earlier tools, the per-component configurations are loaded from .rc files in the working directory of each component. The configuration names are also based on the original names, hence they can be obscure. the migrate command allows for the conversion of the .rc file to a JSON format one, the original .rc file being renamed to end .rc.orig and allowing the revert command to restore the original (without subsequent changes).

If you want to change settings you should first migrate the configuration and then use set to make changes.

Note that execution mode (e.g. GateMode) is not supported and all components run in the background.

Instance Configuration File

These configuration files - in JSON format - should be found in sub-directories under the geneos base directory (typiocally /opt/itrs, /opt/itrs/geneos or /opt/geneos) as GENEOS_BASE_DIRECTORY/TYPE/TYPEs/INSTANCE/TYPE.json where:

• GENEOS_BASE_DIRECTORY is the base directory for geneos.
• TYPE is the component type (licd, gateway, netprobe, san, fa2, fileagent or webservcer).
• TYPEs is the component type followed by the letter "s" (lowercase) to indicate a plural.
• INSTANCE is the instance name.
• TYPE.json is a the file name (e.g. licd.json, gateway.json, etc.).]

Directory Layout

%%{ init: { 'theme': 'neutral', 'flowchart': { 'curve': 'basis' } } }%%
flowchart LR
  root[.]
  root ---> Packages
    subgraph Packages
      direction LR
      packages ---> packages/downloads[downloads]
      packages ---> packages/gateway[gateway]
      packages ---> packages/netprobe[netprobe]
      packages ---> packages/licd[licd]
      packages ---> packages/webserver[webserver]
    end
    click packages href "https://www.itrsgroup.com"
  root ---> Gateways
    subgraph Gateways
      direction LR
      gateway ----> gateway/gateways[gateways]
      gateway ---> gateway_shared & gateway_config & gateway/templates[templates]
        gateway/gateways ---> gateway/gateways/example1[example1]
        gateway/gateways ---> gateway/gateways/example2[example2]
        gateway/gateways ---> gateway/gateways/example3[...]
    end
  root ---> Netprobes
    subgraph Netprobes
      direction LR
      netprobe ----> netprobe/netprobes[netprobes]
      netprobe ----> netprobe/sans[sans]
      netprobe ---> netprobe_shared & netprobe_config & netprobe/templates[templates]
        netprobe/netprobes ---> netprobe/netprobes/example1[example1]
        netprobe/netprobes ---> netprobe/netprobes/example2[example2]
        netprobe/netprobes ---> netprobe/netprobes/example3[...]
        netprobe/sans ---> netprobe/sans/example1[example1]
        netprobe/sans ---> netprobe/sans/example2[example2]
        netprobe/sans ---> netprobe/sans/example3[...]
    end