Standalone AppSignal Agent installation

In order to provide a full picture of your infrastructure, you should monitor not just application servers, but any server your application depends on (eg. database servers). In order to do this, we offer a standalone mode in our AppSignal agent. This allows you to run the AppSignal agent without having to start it from a Ruby/Elixir process.

Installation

We are in the process of testing and packaging the standalone agent on Linux distributions that are most popular with our customers. Let us know if you want to run the agent on a distribution that is not supported yet.

Debian and Ubuntu

The agent has been tested on Ubuntu LTS 14.04/16.04/18.04/20.04 and Debian 8/9/10. First make sure the following packages are installed. All the following commands need root permissions, you might have to use sudo.

apt-get install curl gnupg apt-transport-https

Then import the GPG key from Packagecloud. This is a service we use to host the repositories for us.

curl -L https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -

Create a file named /etc/apt/sources.list.d/appsignal_agent.list that contains the repository configuration below for the OS you use.

Ubuntu

Make sure to replace focal in the config below with your Ubuntu release's name. Use xenial for 16.04, bionic for 18.04 or trusty for 14.04.

deb https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/ubuntu/ focal main
deb-src https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/ubuntu/ focal main

Debian

Make sure to replace buster in the config below with your Debian release's name. Use stretch for 9 and jessie for 8.

deb https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/debian/ buster main
deb-src https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/debian/ buster main

Then run apt update to get the newly added packages and install the agent.

apt-get update
apt-get install appsignal-agent

The agent has now been installed. Next up is configuring it to report to the correct app in AppSignal.

Redhat Enterprise Linux/Centos

At the moment EL version 7 and 8 are supported. First make sure the following packages are installed. All the following commands need root permissions, you might have to use sudo.

yum install pygpgme yum-utils

Create a file named /etc/yum.repos.d/appsignal_agent.repo that contains the repository configuration below for EL7:

[appsignal_agent]
name=appsignal_agent
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/el/7/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/gpgkey
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300

Or this config for EL8:

[appsignal_agent]
name=appsignal_agent
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/el/8/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/appsignal/agent/gpgkey
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300

Update your local yum cache by running:

yum -q makecache -y --disablerepo='*' --enablerepo='appsignal_agent'

And you can then install the agent:

yum install appsignal-agent

Configuration

The standalone agent configuration can be found at /etc/appsignal-agent.conf. For a list of all the available options, see the configuration options page for the standalone agent.

The required Push API key can be found in the "Push & Deploy" section for any app in your organization, and in the "Add app" wizard for your organization.

When configuring the standalone agent, pick an app name and environment that works for you. It can either be a separate app, or you can configure it for an existing app so that it reports as a new host to that app.

# /etc/appsignal-agent.conf
push_api_key = "<YOUR PUSH API KEY>"
app_name = "<YOUR APP NAME>"
environment = "<YOUR APP ENVIRONMENT>"
hostname = "<YOUR HOST NAME>"

For example:

# /etc/appsignal-agent.conf
push_api_key = "0000-0000-0000-000"
app_name = "My app name"
environment = "production"
hostname = "hostname"

Once you edit the configuration file you need to restart the agent.

• On Ubuntu 14.04 use service appsignal-agent restart
• On Centos/Redhat and Ubuntu 16.04 and up use systemctl restart appsignal-agent

Collected metrics

The agent collects host metrics by default. You can also send StatsD messages to it that will be processed as custom metrics.

We are eager to get feedback on this, let us know via the chat in the app or support@appsignal.com.