Disable Agent Updates

Insight Agent versions 4.0.3 and higher allow you to disable Agent updates managed by the Insight Platform for a group of assets without altering the update setting for the rest of the organization. To configure Agent updates at the organization level, follow the steps in the Insight Agent update settings documentation.

Installer options

To disable Platform-managed Agent updates for an asset or group of assets, use these installer options and set the Input to True:

OSInstaller OptionInputDefaultDescription
WindowsDISABLE-UPDATESTrue/FalseFalseDisables Platform updates for all Insight Agent sub-components on Windows
Linux or Mac--disable-updatesTrue/FalseFalseDisables Platform updates for all Insight Agent sub-components on Linux and Mac

For example, here is how these installer options will look during Windows and Linux or Mac Agent installations:

Windows

 
1
msiexec /i agentInstaller-<arch>.msi CUSTOMTOKEN=<regionalID:UUID> DISABLE-UPDATES=True

Linux or Mac

 
1
sudo ./agent_installer-<arch>.sh install_start --token <regionalID>:<UUID> --disable-updates=True

To disable Platform-managed Agent updates for a group of agents, use your mass-deployment tool of choice and the installation command above.

Performing an update?

For the setting to continue to take an effect after you update the agent, make sure to specify DISABLE-UPDATES=True in the installation/upgrade command once more. If the option is not present, the agent will go back to following the Platform update setting.

How it works

When the DISABLE-UPDATES option is set to True, the Agent will create a disable_updates.cfg file in the Agent installation directory. The next time the Agent is instructed by the Platform to update, it will first check if the above configuration file exists and if so, will ignore commands from the Platform to update any of the Insight Agent sub-components.

How do I enable Platform-managed updates again?

Rerun the installer without the DISABLE-UPDATES option. Once a new version of the Insight Agent is available, it will respect the Platform update setting.

Will the agent receive InsightVM content updates regardless of this setting?

Yes. This setting only applies to the components listed in the 'How the Insight Agent Works?' article. The agent will continue to receive InsightVM content updates.

How do I know if the setting has been applied?

To check if the setting has been applied, you can search for the disable_updates.cfg file within the agent installation directory. If the file exists, the updates have been disabled for this agent. Next, when a new Insight Agent version is available for your organization, you can monitor the Agent Management page to confirm that this agent's version has not changed.

Agent Management doesn't specifically indicate if Platform-managed updates have been disabled for a particular agent using the installation option described in this article. If you'd like this additional functionality, please contact your Customer Support Manager with a request for improvement.