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Status Future consideration
Workspace Instana
Categories Agent
Created by Guest
Created on Jan 4, 2023

RELATED IDEAS

Host Agent to run without sudoers permission

We've gotten this request from a few customers that don't want processes running as root. The request is to provide support for the Host Agent to run as non-root user.


The customer understands that they would be giving up some of the discovery capabilities, but they need this in order to pass their security audits and approvals.

Idea priority High
  • Admin
    Mike Mallo
    Reply
    |     May 17, 2023

    Changed the title to "Host Agent to run without sudoers permission" as the prior title of "Host Agent to run without root" is already possible as mentioned in the comments and documentation "Should it not be possible to run as root, at least ensure the agent user is listed in sudoers with a valid shell."
    https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/instana-observability/current?topic=agents-installing-host-agent-linux#installing-the-agent

  • Admin
    Henning Treu
    Reply
    |     Mar 29, 2023

    The agent requires privileged access on the host system to collect all supported metrics and tracing data. The agent can however be run as non-root but with limited functionality. This is setup & environment dependent and not documented. Some more information can be found in the official documentation: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/instana-observability/current?topic=requirements-installing-host-agent-linux#tarball-installation

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Mar 28, 2023

    A banking leader customer is evaluating Instana as observability software for both, the distributed environment and z/OS monitoring.

    The client wants run the agent as a non-root user due to internal security policies, which do not allow any type of exception.

    Please consider this idea to include it in the Instana roadmap and return to the client with some response to continue with the opportunity.

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