Manually installing SSM Agent on Amazon Linux instances - AWS Systems Manager
Quick installation commands for SSM Agent on Amazon LinuxCreate custom agent installation commands for Amazon Linux in your Region

Manually installing SSM Agent on Amazon Linux instances

Important

This topic provides commands for working with SSM Agent on Amazon Linux instances. Some of these commands aren't supported on Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023 instances. Before continuing, verify that you're viewing the correct topic for your instance type. For commands to run on Amazon Linux 2 or Amazon Linux 2023 instances, see Manually installing SSM Agent on Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023 instances.

In most cases, the Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for Amazon Linux that are provided by AWS come with AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) preinstalled by default. For more information, see Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) with SSM Agent preinstalled.

In the event that SSM Agent isn’t preinstalled on a new Amazon Linux instance, or if you need to manually reinstall the agent, use the information on this page to help you.

Before you begin

Before you install SSM Agent on an Amazon Linux instance, note the following:

  • For important information that applies to installation of SSM Agent on all Linux-based operating systems, see Manually installing SSM Agent on EC2 instances for Linux.

  • Managed nodes created from an Amazon Linux AMI that use a proxy must run a current version of the Python requests module to support Patch Manager operations. For more information, see Upgrading the Python requests module on Amazon Linux instances that use a proxy server.

  • If you use a yum command to update SSM Agent on a managed node after the agent has been installed or updated using the SSM document AWS-UpdateSSMAgent, you might see the following message: "Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum." This message is expected and can be safely ignored.

Quick installation commands for SSM Agent on Amazon Linux

Use the following steps to manually install SSM Agent on a single instance. This procedure uses globally available installation files.

To install SSM Agent on Amazon Linux using quick copy and paste commands

  1. Connect to your Amazon Linux instance using your preferred method, such as SSH.

  2. Copy the command for your instance’s architecture and run it on the instance.

    Note

    Even though URLs in the following commands include an ec2-downloads-windows directory, these are the correct global installation files for Amazon Linux.

    x86_64
    sudo yum install -y https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/linux_amd64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm
    x86
    sudo yum install -y https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/linux_386/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm
    ARM64
    sudo yum install -y https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/linux_arm64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

  3. (Recommended) Run the command for your instance’s architecture to verify that the agent is running.

    x86_64 and x86
    sudo status amazon-ssm-agent
    ARM64
    sudo systemctl status amazon-ssm-agent

    In most cases, the command reports that the agent is running, as shown in the following examples.

    x86_64 and x86
    amazon-ssm-agent start/running, process 12345
    ARM64
    amazon-ssm-agent.service - amazon-ssm-agent
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/amazon-ssm-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Wed 2021-10-20 19:09:29 UTC; 4min 6s ago
            --truncated--

    In rare cases, the command reports that the agent is installed but not running, as shown in the following examples.

    x86_64 and x86
    amazon-ssm-agent stop/waiting
    ARM64
    amazon-ssm-agent.service - amazon-ssm-agent
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/amazon-ssm-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead) since Wed 2021-10-20 22:16:41 UTC; 18s ago
            --truncated--

    To activate the agent in these cases, run the command for your instance's architecture.

    x86_64 and x86
    sudo start amazon-ssm-agent
    ARM64
    sudo systemctl start amazon-ssm-agent

Create custom agent installation commands for Amazon Linux in your Region

When you install SSM Agent on multiple instances using a script or template, we recommended using installation files that are stored in the AWS Region you're working in.

For the following commands, we provide examples that use a publicly accessible S3 bucket in the US East (Ohio) Region (us-east-2).

Tip

You can also replace a global URL in the procedure Quick installation commands for SSM Agent on Amazon Linux earlier in this topic with a custom Regional URL you construct.

In the following command, replace region with your own information. For a list of supported region values, see the Region column in Systems Manager service endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

x86_64
sudo yum install -y https://s3.region.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-region/latest/linux_amd64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

See the following example.

sudo yum install -y https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-us-east-2/latest/linux_amd64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm
x86
sudo yum install -y https://s3.region.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-region/latest/linux_386/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

See the following example.

sudo yum install -y https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-us-east-2/latest/linux_386/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm
ARM64
sudo yum install -y https://s3.region.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-region/latest/linux_arm64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

See the following example.

sudo yum install -y https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-us-east-2/latest/linux_arm64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm