System requirements and considerations

You can find information about the system requirements and considerations when you install the agent as a service by using the systemd software suite.

Supported operating systems

The systemd software suite supports the following operating systems:
  • RHEL 8, 9, and later versions
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15 and later versions
  • Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04, and later versions
Note: The supplied systemd service unit file is tested on the listed operating systems and might not be compatible with other Linux distributions.

SLES considerations

For SLES-enabled systems, install the agent in the default location. Installing the agent outside the default location might prevent the systemd from starting the service and could result in error messages. You must consider the following when installing the agents on SLES-enabled systems:
  • When the agent is installed in the default location, it can run as a non-root user. Configure the file ownership settings correctly.
  • If you do not install the agent in the default location, the self-upgrade feature may not apply appropriate labels when replacing files. This feature might prevent the service from starting after an upgrade.
  • When the agent is installed and configured correctly, the service runs with minimum restrictions beyond the traditional UNIX restrictions.

Cgroup considerations

You can start applications after deployment and expect the application to continue to run even after the agent is restarted or upgraded. However, this expectation conflicts with the default behavior of systemd, which places all processes associated with the service in a Linux cgroup and ends them when the main service process stops.

To mitigate this behavior, the default KillMode in the script is set to process in the agent's service unit file. When the agent process stops, this setting causes systemd to ignore other processes in the agent’s cgroup. However, there is a risk of runaway processes consuming system resources.

Note: You must change the KillMode command setting or remove it to revert to the default behavior if starting the applications as described using cgroup is unnecessary or if the application is managed separately. For example, as separate systemd services started with the systemctl command.

Considerations for Deploy 8.0.1 and earlier versions

The unit files embedded with the Deploy package are not compatible with older versions of Deploy (8.0.1 or earlier) with systemd. Users of the older product versions must continue to use System V Init scripts.

Note: The operating systems that support running the agent with systemd also support System V Init scripts.

The systemd's System V Init compatibility functionality allows systemd to interpret and manage legacy System V Init scripts. This functionality enables the older versions and applications to run on systems using the systemd without modifying scripts. This compatibility functionality requires the installation of compatibility packages.