Manually install SSM Agent on Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances

Connect to your RHEL instance and perform the following steps to install AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent). Perform these steps on each instance that will run commands using Systems Manager.

Note

If you use a yum command to update SSM Agent on a managed instance 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.

RHEL 8.x

To install SSM Agent on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x

1. Ensure that either Python 2 or Python 3 is installed on your RHEL 8 instance. This is required in order for SSM Agent to work properly.

2. Use one of the following commands to download and run the SSM Agent installer.

   region represents the identifier for an AWS Region supported by AWS Systems Manager, such as us-east-2 for the US East (Ohio) Region. For a list of supported region values, see the Region column in Systems Manager service endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

   Intel 64-bit (x86_64) instances:

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

   ARM 64-bit (arm64) instances::

   sudo dnf install -y https://s3.region.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-region/latest/linux_arm64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

3. Run one of the following commands to determine if SSM Agent is running. The command should return the message amazon-ssm-agent is running.

   sudo systemctl status amazon-ssm-agent

4. Run the following commands if the previous command returned amazon-ssm-agent is stopped.

   1. Start the service.

      sudo systemctl enable amazon-ssm-agent

      sudo systemctl start amazon-ssm-agent

   2. Check the status of the agent.

      sudo systemctl status amazon-ssm-agent

RHEL 7.x

To install SSM Agent on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x

1. Use one of the following commands to download and run the SSM Agent installer.

   region represents the identifier for an AWS Region supported by AWS Systems Manager, such as us-east-2 for the US East (Ohio) Region. For a list of supported region values, see the Region column in Systems Manager service endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

   Intel 64-bit (x86_64) instances:

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

   ARM 64-bit (arm64) instances:

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

2. Run one of the following commands to determine if SSM Agent is running. The command should return the message amazon-ssm-agent is running.

   sudo systemctl status amazon-ssm-agent

3. Run the following commands if the previous command returned amazon-ssm-agent is stopped.

   1. Start the service.

      sudo systemctl enable amazon-ssm-agent

      sudo systemctl start amazon-ssm-agent

   2. Check the status of the agent.

      sudo systemctl status amazon-ssm-agent

RHEL 6.x

To install SSM Agent on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x

1. Use one of the following commands to download and run the SSM Agent installer. SSM Agent version 3.1 and later are not supported for RHEL 6.

   region represents the identifier for an AWS Region supported by AWS Systems Manager, such as us-east-2 for the US East (Ohio) Region. For a list of supported region values, see the Region column in Systems Manager service endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

   Intel 64-bit (x86_64) instances:

   sudo yum install -y https://s3.region.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-region/3.0.1390.0/linux_amd64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

   Intel 32-bit (x86) instances:

   sudo yum install -y https://s3.region.amazonaws.com/amazon-ssm-region/3.0.1390.0/linux_386/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

2. Run one of the following commands to determine if SSM Agent is running. The command should return the message amazon-ssm-agent is running.

   sudo status amazon-ssm-agent

3. Run the following commands if the previous command returned amazon-ssm-agent is stopped.

   1. Start the service.

      sudo start amazon-ssm-agent

   2. Check the status of the agent.

      sudo status amazon-ssm-agent

Note

If you're unable to download the agent from the AWS Region you specify, use one of the following global URLs. Even though the following URLs show 'ec2-downloads-windows', these are the correct URLs for Linux operating systems.

• Intel 64-bit (x86_64)

  https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/linux_amd64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

• Intel 32-bit (x86)

  https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/linux_386/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

• ARM 64-bit (arm64)

  https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/linux_arm64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

Important

An updated version of SSM Agent is released whenever new capabilities are added to Systems Manager or updates are made to existing capabilities. If an older version of the agent is running on an instance, some SSM Agent processes can fail. For that reason, we recommend that you automate the process of keeping SSM Agent up-to-date on your instances. For information, see Automating updates to SSM Agent. Subscribe to the SSM Agent Release Notes page on GitHub to get notifications about SSM Agent updates.