Checking the agent prerequisites on Linux

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Before you install the agent, make sure that all the necessary prerequisite conditions are met. See the following sections for the necessary prerequisite conditions:

Before you install

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Before you install the agent, check the following topics:

  1. Check whether you have a supported Linux operating system and distribution as described in the Supported operating system section.

  2. Check whether you have a supported platform architecture as described in the Supported platform architecture section.

  3. Check whether the network requirements for host agents are met as described in the network requirements for Instana agent.

  4. The Instana host agent has deep access into the observed system where it is installed. Check security considerations when the agent is running as described in Host agent security considerations.

  5. Different versions of the Instana host agent appear in the Instana UI and in the documentation. Check the various versions as described in Host agent versioning.

  6. If you plan to run the agent as a non-root user (public preview), make sure that your system uses systemd for service management. For more information about prerequisites and installation instructions, see Running the agent as a non-root user.

Supported operating systems

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Check that you have one of the following Linux operating systems and distributions that are supported for the Instana host agent:

  • Ubuntu Linux 14.04 (trusty)
  • Ubuntu Linux 16.04 (xenial)
  • Ubuntu Linux 18.04 (beaver)
  • Ubuntu Linux 20.04 (focal)
  • Ubuntu Linux 22.04 (jammy)
  • Ubuntu Linux 24.04 (noble)
  • CentOS 6 [1]
  • CentOS 7, 8, 9, 10
  • Debian 9 (stretch)
  • Debian 10 (buster)
  • Debian 11 (bullseye)
  • Debian 12 (bookworm)
  • Debian 13 (trixie)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12 [2]
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6, 7 [3]
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8, 9, 10 [4]
  • Oracle Enterprise Linux 7
  • Oracle Enterprise Linux 8
  • Oracle Enterprise Linux 9
  • Amazon Linux 1
  • Amazon Linux 2
  • Amazon Linux 2023
  • Alma Linux 8
  • Alma Linux 9
  • z/Linux, Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE (s390x, 64 bit) [5]
  • z/OS (OS/390) - (s390x) - Supported WebSphere and Liberty tracing
  • Kylin Linux Advanced Server v10 (x86_64 & aarch64) [6]

Supported platform architecture

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Check that you have a Linux operating system and distribution on the following supported platform architectures:

Name Bitness Vendor
x86 32 bit Intel/AMD
x64, amd64 64 bit Intel/AMD
arm 32 bit ARM
arm64, aarch64 64 bit ARM
ppc 32 bit IBM Power
ppc 64 bit IBM Power
ppc64le 64 bit IBM Power, little endian
s390x 64 bit IBM z/Architecture

After you meet the prerequisite conditions, you can proceed to Choosing how you want to install the agent.

Footnotes:

  1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and CentOS 6 include the tool tmpwatch , which is known to delete necessary files in the /tmp/.instana directory. However, the use of tmpwatch in these distributions can occasionally cause update problems with the host agent. For more information, see Temporary files. ↩︎

  2. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 is not supported due to outdated OpenSSL binary files. ↩︎

  3. Instana host agent RPM packages are signed with SHA-256 and conform to FIPS standards. On RHEL ELS 6 and 7, the RPM package manager does not support the SHA-256 algorithm and cannot verify the package integrity. Install the RPM package manager 4.14.3 or later to ensure SHA-256 support. ↩︎

  4. Instana host agent RPM packages are signed with SHA-256 and conform to FIPS standards. ↩︎

  5. Instana host agent supports the s390x platform with Red Hat, Suse, and Ubuntu versions that are previously listed and are also supported on IBM Z. ↩︎

  6. Support for Kylin Linux is limited to Mainland China. ↩︎