Manual offline installation of a SolarWinds Platform agent on Linux

With manual offline installation for LINUX Agent, you can download the compressed archive and extract it on the target Linux machine and then execute the installation command. The archive can be delivered to the target machine in many ways, including SCP, copying it from the shared network drive, copying it from removable media (flash disk, CD, DVD), or downloading it from a web browser running on the target machine.

Note: See Deploy the agent manually to a Windows computer in the SolarWinds Platform documentation for details on installing SolarWinds Platform Agents to Windows computers.
 

Prerequisites for manual offline installation 

The following packages need to be installed on target Linux machine:

• bash
• service
• dpkg on Debian-based distros (for example Ubuntu)
• rpm on rpm-based distros (for example CentOS, RedHat, SuSE)
• su
• tar and gzip or any other tool capable to unarchive .tar.gz

Other prerequisites:

Offline installation archive must be extracted into a directory whose name does not contain spaces. The recommended path is in /tmp/inst or /var/tmp/inst. 

Note: Manage Agents is located in the SolarWinds Platform Web console under Settings > All Settings > Manage Agents.

Where do I find the SolarWinds Platform web page providing offline installer? 

1. Go to the Manage Agents page.
2. Click the Download Agent Software link.
3. Select Linux and click Next.
4. Select Manually Install by Downloading Files via URL and click Next.
5. Select the desired distro and agent parameters and click Download Agent Software File for Manual Installation link.
6. You can also expand Advanced section and specify proxy or different passive agent port.
7. Save the file to any accessible location and transfer it to the Linux target machine.

8. Extract the archive to a temporary directory:

   oholub@dev-brn-ohol-suse:/tmp/tmpinst> ls -la
   total 13904
   drwxr-xr-x  2 oholub users     4096 Jul 11 11:14 .
   drwxrwxrwt 51 root   root    147456 Jul 11 11:14 ..
   -rwxr-x---  1 oholub users 14078939 Jul 11 11:13 swiagent.tar.gz
   oholub@dev-brn-ohol-suse:/tmp/tmpinst> tar xvf swiagent.tar.gz
   data/swiagent-1.6.0.1601-728088-suse-10.0-x64.rpm
   install.sh
   README.txt

9. Execute the installation. If you are not root, you will be prompted for root password (command su is used here). If you are on a distro that is hiding the root password (for example Ubuntu), you have to switch to root first with sudo su or execute the installation with sudo.

   ./install.sh
   Starting the installation. You may be prompted for root credentials.
   Password:
   Installation finished

The agent should be connected to the SolarWinds Platform.

What to do when an agent is already installed? 

If the installation fails with a message that the agent is already installed, you have to uninstall it manually first with 

rpm -e swiagent or dpkg -r swiagent

How to transfer the archive to target Linux machine 

The following subsections provide examples of ways to transfer the archive to the target machine.

Transfer via SCP 

Prerequisites:

• Working SSH connection to the target Linux machine from the machine where the offline installation archive is stored.

Steps to transfer file swiagent.tar.gz from the current directory to the /tmp directory on the remote system:

scp swiagent.tar.gz user@remote.linux.machine:/tmp/.

Where:

• user is username to be used to logon on target machine.
• remote.linux.machine is the FQDN or IP address of the remote machine.
• /tmp/ is the directory on remote machine where to store file swiagent.tar.gz.
• . (dot) is the name of the copied swiagent.tar.gz. When . (dot) is used, the name remains the same as was in the original location.

If you have only the IPv6 address of the target Linux machine, you have to use brackets:

scp swiagent.tar.gz user@[2001:10:140:126:e905:6bf1:d869:9340]:/tmp/.

Additional information:

• SCP is usually installed on Unix or Linux machines. If it is not, install it with any of the following:
  • yum install scp on CentOS, Red Hat or Fedora
  • apt-get install scp on Ubuntu or Debian
  • zypper install scp on SuSE
• On Windows you can use SCP from Cygwin. It works the same as on Unix systems.

Transfer via WinSCP 

WinSCP is graphical interface over SCP running on Windows. It has a 2-panel layout similar to TotalCommander with very similar controls.

Transfer via SSH 

SCP is not really needed to transfer data via an SSH connection. Simple SSH is enough:

ls -la *.tar.gz
-rwxrwx---+ 1 ondrej.holub Domain Users 14078939 Jul 11 11:13 swiagent.tar.gz

< swiagent.tar.gz ssh oholub@dev-brn-ohol-suse cat - \>/tmp/swiagent.tar.gz
Password:

Download the installer via web browser 

If the target Linux machine already has working web browser supported by the SolarWinds Platform, you can open the agent download page from there and download the agent offline installer directly to the target Linux machine.

Copy from a shared directory or removable media 

• Mount the media containing the offline installer archive (network drive, flash disk, ...)
• Extract swiagent.tar.gz from there.