Manually installing SSM Agent on Amazon Linux 1 instances - AWS Systems Manager
Quick installation commands for SSM Agent on Amazon Linux 1Create custom agent installation commands for Amazon Linux 1 in your Region

Manually installing SSM Agent on Amazon Linux 1 instances

Important

Amazon Linux 1 reached the end of its standard support on December 31, 2020, and reached end of life on December 31, 2023, as announced in Update on Amazon Linux AMI end-of-life on the AWS News Blog. AWS no longer provides Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for this operating system. AWS Systems Manager continues to provide support, however, for existing Amazon Linux 1 instances.

This topic provides commands for working with SSM Agent on Amazon Linux 1 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 1 that are provided by AWS come with AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) preinstalled by default. For more information, see Find AMIs with the SSM Agent preinstalled.

In the event that you need to manually reinstall the agent on Amazon Linux 1, use the information on this page to help you.

Before you begin

Before you install SSM Agent on an Amazon Linux 1 instance, note the following:

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

  • 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 1

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 1 using quick copy and paste commands

  1. Connect to your Amazon Linux 1 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 1.

    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 1 in your Region

When you install SSM Agent on multiple instances using a script or template, we recommend 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 1 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