Installing the Buildkite agent
The Buildkite agent runs on your own machine, whether it's a VPS, server, desktop computer, embedded device. There are installers for:
- Ubuntu
- Debian
- Red Hat/CentOS
- FreeBSD
- macOS
- Windows
- Linux
- Docker
- Agent Stack for Kubernetes
- AWS
- Elastic CI Stack for AWS
- Google Cloud
Alternatively you can install it manually using the instructions below.
Manual installation
If you need to install the agent on a system not listed above you'll need to perform a manual installation using one of the binaries from buildkite-agent's releases page.
Once you have a binary, create bin and builds directories in ~/.buildkite-agent and copy the binary and bootstrap.sh file into place:
mkdir ~/.buildkite-agent ~/.buildkite-agent/bin ~/.buildkite-agent/builds
cp buildkite-agent ~/.buildkite-agent/bin
cp bootstrap.sh ~/.buildkite-agent/bootstrap.sh
You should now be able to start the agent:
buildkite-agent start --help
If your architecture isn't on the releases page send an email to support and we'll help you out, or check out the buildkite-agent's README for instructions on how to compile it yourself.
Upgrade agents
To upgrade your agents, you can either:
- Use the package manager for your operating system.
- Re-run the installation script.
Upgrades within the same major agent version generally don't require configuration changes, but review the release notes before upgrading. Before moving from Agent v3 to v4, read the Agent v3 to v4 upgrade guide for breaking changes and migration instructions.