Update Netdata

By default, the Netdata Agent automatically updates with the latest nightly or stable version depending on which you installed. If you opted out of automatic updates, you need to update your Netdata Agent to the latest nightly or stable version. You can also enable or disable automatic updates on an existing install.

💡 Looking to reinstall the Netdata Agent to enable a feature, update an Agent that cannot update automatically, or troubleshoot an error during the installation process? See our reinstallation doc for reinstallation steps.

Before you update the Netdata Agent, check to see if your Netdata Agent is already up-to-date by clicking on the update icon in the local Agent dashboard's top navigation. This modal informs you whether your Agent needs an update or not.

The exact update method to use depends on the install type:

• Installs with an install type of 'custom' usually indicate installing a third-party package through the system package manager. To update these installs, you should update the package just like you would any other package on your system.
• Installs with an install type starting with binpkg or ending with build or static can be updated using our regular update method.
• Installs with an install type of 'oci' were created from our official Docker images, and should be updated using our Docker update procedure.
• macOS users should check our update instructions for macOS.
• Manually built installs should check our update instructions for manual builds.

Determine which installation method you used

Starting with netdata v1.33.0, you can use Netdata itself to determine the installation type by running:

netdata -W buildinfo | grep -E 'Installation Type|Install type:'

The following table contains all possible installation types:

Installation-type	Description
binpkg-rpm	RPM-based native packages shipped from Netdata's repos.
binpkg-deb	DEB-based native packages shipped from Netdata's repos.
kickstart-build	Build from source with the kickstart script's --build-only option.
kickstart-static	Installed the static builds, shipped from netdata via the kickstart script's (option: --static-only).
manual-static-ARCH	Manually installed static Agent binaries by downloading archives from GitHub and installing them manually. Offline installations are part of this category.
legacy-build	Used for pre-existing kickstart.sh or netdata-installer.sh installations. This exist because we cannot determine how the install originally happened.
legacy-static	Same as legacy-build, but for static installs.
oci	Installed using official Docker images from Netdata, though not necessarily running on Docker
custom	Anything not covered by the other identifiers, including manual builds, manually running netdata-installer.sh, and third-party packages (community).
Unknown	Same as custom.

If you are using an older version of Netdata, or the above command produces no output, you can run our one-line installation script in dry-run mode to attempt to determine what method to use to update by running the following command:

wget -O /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh https://get.netdata.cloud/kickstart.sh && sh /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh --dry-run

Note that if you installed Netdata using an installation prefix, you will need to add an --install-prefix option specifying that prefix to make sure it finds the existing install.

If you see a line starting with --- Would attempt to update existing installation by running the updater script located at:, then our regular update method will work for you.

Otherwise, it should either indicate that the installation type is not supported (which probably means you either have a custom install or built Netdata manually) or indicate that it would create a new install (which means that you either used a non-standard install path, or that you don’t actually have Netdata installed).

Updates for most systems

In most cases, you can update netdata using our one-line installation script. This script will automatically run the update script that was installed as part of the initial install (even if you disabled automatic updates) and preserve the existing install options you specified.

If you installed Netdata using an installation prefix, you will need to add an --install-prefix option specifying that prefix to this command to make sure it finds Netdata.

wget -O /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh https://get.netdata.cloud/kickstart.sh && sh /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh

Issues with older binpkg installs

The above command is known not to work with binpkg type installs for stable releases with a version number of v1.33.1 or earlier, and nightly builds with a version number of v1.33.1-93 or earlier. If you have such a system, the above command will report that it found an existing install, and then issue a warning about not being able to find the updater script.

On such installs, you can update Netdata using your distribution package manager.

Updates on hosts without IPv4 connectivity

The update process outlined above suffers from the same issues that installing on hosts without IPv4 connectivity does, and requires similar workarounds. For more details check the explanation in our install documentation.

If the kickstart script does not work

If the above command fails, you can reinstall Netdata to get the latest version. This also preserves your configuration in netdata.conf or other files just like updating normally would, though you will need to specify any installation options you used originally again.

Docker

Docker-based installations do not update automatically. To update an Netdata Agent running in a Docker container, you must pull the latest image from Docker Hub, stop and remove the container, and re-create it using the latest image.

First, pull the latest version of the image.

docker pull netdata/netdata:latest

Next, to stop and remove any containers using the netdata/netdata image. Replace netdata if you changed it from the default.

docker stop netdata
docker rm netdata

You can now re-create your Netdata container using the docker command or a docker-compose.yml file. See our Docker installation instructions for details.

macOS

If you installed Netdata on your macOS system using Homebrew, you can explicitly request an update:

brew upgrade netdata

Homebrew downloads the latest Netdata via the formulae, ensures all dependencies are met, and updates Netdata via reinstallation.

If you instead installed Netdata using our one-line installation script, you can use our regular update instructions to update Netdata.

Manual installation from Git

If you installed Netdata manually from Git, you can run that installer again to update your agent. First, run our automatic requirements installer, which works on many Linux distributions, to ensure your system has the dependencies necessary for new features.

bash <(curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/netdata/netdata/master/packaging/installer/install-required-packages.sh)

Navigate to the directory where you first cloned the Netdata repository, pull the latest source code, and run netdata-install.sh again. This process compiles Netdata with the latest source code and updates it via reinstallation.

cd /path/to/netdata/git
git pull origin master
sudo ./netdata-installer.sh

⚠️ If you installed Netdata with any optional parameters, such as --no-updates to disable automatic updates, and want to retain those settings, you need to set them again during this process.

Control automatic updates

Starting with Netdata v1.34.0, you can easily enable or disable automatic updates on an existing installation using the updater script.

For most installs on Linux, you can enable auto-updates with:

/usr/libexec/netdata/netdata-updater.sh --enable-auto-updates

and disable them with:

/usr/libexec/netdata/netdata-updater.sh --disable-auto-updates

For static installs, instead use:

/opt/netdata/usr/libexec/netdata/netdata-updater.sh --enable-auto-updates

and:

/opt/netdata/usr/libexec/netdata/netdata-updater.sh --disable-auto-updates

Control runtime behavior of the updater script.

Starting with v1.40.0, the netdata-updater.sh script supports a config file called netdata-updater.conf, located in the same directory as the main netdata.conf file. This file uses POSIX shell script syntax to define variables that are used by the updater.

This configuration file can be edited using our edit-config script.

The following configuration options are currently supported:

• NETDATA_UPDATER_JITTER: Sets an upper limit in seconds on the random delay in the updater script when running as a scheduled task. This random delay helps avoid issues resulting from too many nodes trying to reconnect to the Cloud at the same time. The default value is 3600, which corresponds to one hour. Most users should not ever need to change this.
• NETDATA_MAJOR_VERSION_UPDATES: If set to a value other than 0, then new major versions will be installed without user confirmation. Must be set to a non-zero value for automated updates to install new major versions.
• NETDATA_NO_SYSTEMD_JOURNAL: If set to a value other than 0, skip attempting to install the netdata-plugin-systemd-journal package on supported systems on update. This optional package will be installed by default on supported systems by the updater if this option is not set. Only affects systems using native packages.