Werk #5267: cmk-update-agent: New binary format of Agent Updater executable on Linux

Component Agent bakery
Title cmk-update-agent: New binary format of Agent Updater executable on Linux
Date Dec 15, 2017
Checkmk Edition Checkmk Enterprise (CEE)
Checkmk Version 1.5.0i2
Level Prominent Change
Class New Feature
Compatibility Compatible - no manual interaction needed

The cmk-update-agent executable is now implemented as a packaged binary executable. This werk consists of many changes that have partly already been applied to Check_MK 1.5.0i1.

The new agent updater addresses several problems and yields some improvements:

  • Better compatibility: All requirements regarding the installed Python Interpreter or other packages/programs were eliminated; the only requirements left are a x86_64 processor architecture and a glibc 2.5 or above.

  • Notably, there will be no more problems with curl and because all communication is now done via python-requests, which is included within the cmk-update-agent executable as mentioned above.

  • The reduction of the requirements will also reduce compatibility problems on some systems related to the encrypted SSL communication with the Check_MK server.

  • More convenient communication with Check_MK Server: All HTTP-Requests have been changed to POST-Requests. This improves confidentiality of the information transfered to the Check_MK server. The data is no longer written to the apache log of the Check_MK servers apache (system and site apache).

  • cmk-update-agent installed only once: The copy of cmk-update-agent previously placed under /usr/bin/cmk-update-agent has been replaced by a shell script that executes the actual cmk-update-agent executable situated at the Check_MK Agent plugin directory. This eliminates the need to maintain two places when manually replacing cmk-update-agent for debugging reasons. However, it is still possible to execute a copy of the cmk-update-agent executable directly.

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