Recently a friend asked me how in webmethods, she could fire linux specific utility tasks. She wanted to find out if the disk space is full on linux. This can be done very easily by the “df- kh” command. But how to invoke this through webmethods?
Solution: Follow the steps below.
Step 1: Create a Java Service with the following input and output
Step 2: Paste in the following code:
//—- BEGIN OF CODE
//Author: Hussain Fakhruddin
//Date: 20090203
IDataCursor cursor = pipeline.getCursor();
//Return if no command is specified…
if (!cursor.first(“command”)) return;
String output = “”;
try {
String command = (String)cursor.getValue();
String line=”";
//Creating a Process Instance and executing the command..
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command);
// Capturing the output.
BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
while ((line = input.readLine()) != null) {
output = output + line + “\n”;
}
input.close();
}
catch (Exception err) {
// Do something on error… may be throw a ServiceException
}
// setting the outputMsg for whatever output the command has given.
cursor.insertAfter(“outputMsg”, output);
//—–END OF CODE————
Step 3: Run the program and pass the unix/linux command
Note: DO NOT use commands which are not exiting after giving an output. For example “tail -f” . This service is only for commands like “df -hk” or “cp file1 file2” or “pwd” or “ls -lrt“.
If you face some issues, do feel free to write back.


Thanks Hussain.
Appreciate great work.
Hi,
Is there way to calculate total transactions flowing through webMethods?
Thanks in Advance.
Hi,
Thanks for this post, I have same kind of code in my existing interface.
All commands are working except gzip command, it was used to work earlier, but from a week I could see an issue with nullpoint exception even though command is correct and file exists at target location.
Please suggest if you have any valid points on this.
Thanks
Chandra