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mabl Link 2.0

about 6 years ago by James Baldassari

Version 2 of mabl Link has been released which includes several changes designed to make it easier to integrate mabl Link into your environment. For complete documentation, go to Secure tunneling with mabl Link

HTTP-based protocol

The Link Agent can now be configured to use an HTTP-based protocol (specifically websockets) to communicate with the Link Server. This changes makes it possible to route Link traffic through an HTTP forward proxy and enables the other major features described below. To use the new protocol, pass a new flag to the Link Agent when starting it: --protocol wss

By default the Link Agent uses the original SSL-based protocol, but in a future release the websocket protocol will become the default, and the legacy SSL protocol will be removed. All users are encouraged to migrate to the new protocol as soon as possible.

Support for HTTP forward proxies

The Link Agent can now be configured to use an HTTP forward proxy, including support for basic proxy auth, and all traffic will be routed through that proxy. Use the following command-line arguments to configure the proxy:

  • --http-proxy <host>:<port>
  • --proxy-auth <username>:<password>

Link Agent connects to Link Server by DNS name instead of IP address

One issue some customers had with mabl Link was that it was difficult to whitelist its traffic since the agent connected to an IP address that could change during an agent restart. When --protocol wss is used, the agent will instead connect to a generated DNS name of the form <host>.link.mabl.com where the <host> component is generated based on the --name argument passed at startup and will never change as long as the agent is started using the same name. Security teams can whitelist that individual FQDN or the wildcard *.link.mabl.com.

The specific DNS name that the agent will connect to can be found in the logs/agent.log file or by looking at the Settings => Networking tab in the UI (see the Endpoint column for your Link Agent).

Static IPs

The DNS name that the agent connects to will always resolve to the same IP address. This may be more convenient if DNS/host-based whitelisting is not an option.

Fewer external dependencies

Regardless of the which protocol is used, the agent will only initiate outbound connections to two endpoints:

  1. api.mabl.com
  2. The DNS name (when using the WSS protocol) or public IP address (if using the SSL protocol) of the Link Server

Easier ways to shut down the Link Agent

There are now a couple of more convenient methods for shutting down the Link Agent:

  1. The agent's process ID will be written to the file run/link-agent.pid. The Link Agent monitors this file, and if deleted, the agent will shut itself down.
  2. There is now a shut down button in the UI on the Settings => Network tab that can be used to send a signal to your agent to shut itself down

Link Agent distribution archive improvements

The size of the Link Agent distribution archive has been reduced by 15%, and dependencies have been combined into a single file for simpler deployments.