Werk #19275: Linux agent controller now available for ARM64 (aarch64)
| Component | Checks & agents | ||||
| Title | Linux agent controller now available for ARM64 (aarch64) | ||||
| Date | Feb 11, 2026 | ||||
| Level | Prominent Change | ||||
| Class | New Feature | ||||
| Compatibility | Compatible - no manual interaction needed | ||||
| Checkmk versions & editions |
|
The Checkmk agent controller is now available for Linux ARM64 (aarch64) systems.
Broader ARM support is one of the most popular requests in our community, this is the first step towards it. With this change, the full Checkmk agent feature set is now available on ARM64 Linux systems.
What's in
The ARM64 agent controller binary
The (gzipped) ARM64 agent controller is included in all Checkmk installations and can be found under ~/share/check_mk/agents/linux/cmk-agent-ctl-aarch64.gz in your Checkmk site.
To install the Checkmk agent on ARM64 Linux, the recommended approach is to repackage the Checkmk agent .rpm or .deb package under ~/share/check_mk/agents/ and to place cmk-agent-ctl-aarch64.gz next to the already existing cmk-agent-ctl.gz.
On agent installation, the setup scripts automatically detect the architecture and deploy the matching agent controller binary.
It's currently not included in the shipped packages to keep them lightweight.
Agent bakery integration
If you use the Agent Bakery, there's a new option Architecture of the systems where the agent will be deployed in the Customize agent package (Linux) ruleset to control which agent controller architectures are included in baked packages:
- x86 64-bit only (default selected option)
- ARM 64-bit only
- x86 64-bit or ARM 64-bit
If both target architectures are selected, the installer will handle the deployment of the correct binary, as mentioned above.
Scope of ARM support
Please note that there is a slight difference between Building a package that's meant to run on ARM64 and Building an ARM64 package. While the core agent features are now fully supported on ARM (Transport level encryption, Push agent, Compression, etc.), agent plugins are diverse, and we cannot guarantee that every packaged plugin is compatible with Linux ARM 64-bit. To help you build a clean ARM 64-bit packages, we have included the following checks in the Agent Bakery:
- If you choose only ARM 64-bit as the target architecture and you package an agent plugin that is unavailable for ARM, the Bakery will refuse to bake the package to prevent technical inconsistencies
- If you choose both x86 64-bit and ARM 64-bit as target architectures and you package an agent plugin that is unavailable for ARM, a warning will be emitted during agent installation.
Please note that, while including both architectures in a single package is possible, we recommend keeping your ARM and x86 packages cleanly separated.