Agent Auto-update

The auto-update feature of the agent allows the distribution of new versions of the agent without reinstalling it on a user's machine. The agent utilizes the published *.zip bundles for the auto-update process.

Prerequisites

Before auto-update can be initiated, the installation must meet the following prerequisites:
  • Not a Release Candidate (RC) Version: The installation cannot be an RC version. The current version type can be verified as follows on Windows by checking the registry key: 
    Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Getvisibility\Global\IsRCVersion.
  • Server Access: The agent must have access to the server.
  • Availability of Auto-update Artifacts: The new agent version must be available via bundle assigned to a cluster.
  • Auto-update Enabled: This is explained in the steps below.

Enabling auto-update

By default, the auto-update functionality is disabled and can be enabled from the Endpoint > System > Endpoint Settings.

The following properties can be adjusted:
  • Auto-update: Server URL or path- Server address where auto update artifact is hosted. This is the location where the agent will attempt to download updates. It should be left empty by default, and the agent will assume default values.
    • By default, the endpoint defaults to:
    • Custom URLs or paths do not support beta releases.
    • It supports local file path - if this is the case, the full path to the directory must be provided, e.g. C:/Artifacts
    • If a custom URL is used it must be a NGINX file Server which lists the files in JSON format - configuration autoindex_format json. Example:
      server {  
 listen 80;  
 server_name auto-updater;  
 access_log /var/log/access.log;  
 error_log /var/log/error.log;  
 location /static/ {  
 alias /var/static/;  
 autoindex on;  
 autoindex_format json;  
 gzip_static on;  
 expires max;  
 add_header Cache-Control public;  
 }  
}
  • Auto-update: regex for agent packages to include- Regular expression which is executed to search for packages to apply. It should be left empty by default, and the agent will assume default values.
  • Auto-update: check for updates frequency rate- How often the agent should look for updates. By default, it should be left empty, and agent will assume default values.
  • Enable beta version update- If this option is enabled and appropriate machine name entries are created, the targeted machines will attempt to fetch auto-updates from beta endpoints (https://{cluster}/static-server/static/agent/beta/) instead of stable endpoints (stable endpoint will be completely ignored by the agent).

The agent only supports upgrading via auto-update. It is not possible to downgrade using auto-update functionality. This means removing machine from beta endpoints will not result in the agent downgrading to the previous stable version.