Deploying agents

Building a configured installer, what it does on the target host, and how the host stays current afterwards.

On this page

1. Building an installer
2. What the Windows installer does
3. Host configuration locations
4. Staying current

Building an installer

ProvCollector.Management/Build-Installers.ps1 builds a configured agent installer for either platform. It prompts for Kafka bootstrap servers, schema registry URL, SASL credentials and a CA certificate path, injects them into the platform’s default.yaml, stages the certificate beside the setup project, and builds.

./ProvCollector.Management/Build-Installers.ps1 -Platform Windows `
    -BootstrapServers broker:9092 -SchemaRegistryUrl https://broker:8081 `
    -SaslUsername agent -SaslPassword '...' -CaCertPath ./ca.crt

Windows produces MSIs from the WiX v6 projects. Linux produces self-extracting Rust setup binaries.

The installer bakes in the connection settings so that a host needs no manual configuration to start reporting. Everything it writes can still be replaced later by pushing new configuration from the dashboard.

What the Windows installer does

ProvCollector.Agent.Windows.Setup and ProvCollector.Updater.Windows.Setup produce per-machine MSIs. Each one:

• Installs to C:\Program Files\ProvCollector\{App}.
• Registers a LocalSystem Windows Service with Start=auto.
• Writes YAML configuration into C:\ProgramData\ProvCollector\Agent.Windows\Config.

Host configuration locations

	Windows	Linux
Agent config	C:\ProgramData\ProvCollector\Agent.Windows\Config\Agent.Windows.yaml	/etc/ProvCollector/Agent.Linux/Config/Agent.yaml
Updater config	same folder, Agent.Windows.Updater.yaml	/etc/ProvCollector/Updater/Config/Agent.Updater.yaml
Agent service	ProvCollector.Agent.Windows	provcollector-agent
Updater service	ProvCollector.Updater	provcollector-updater
Logs	C:\ProgramData\ProvCollector\Agent.Windows\Logs	/var/log/ProvCollector/{Name}
Agent ID	HKLM\SOFTWARE\ProvCollector\Agent.Windows\AgentId	/etc/ProvCollector/Agent.Linux/PersistentData/AgentId

Staying current

The Updater runs as a second service beside the agent and maintains a connection to the fleet backend. In addition to performing updates for itself and the agent, the updater manages configuration delivery and reports agent liveness telemetry.

The updater checks for updates every IntervalHours (default 24), or on-demand when an update is requested from the fleet backend.

AllowInvalidCertificates disables TLS peer verification on the updater’s hub connection, and is intended for development only. With it set, the channel over which the host receives installer instructions is unauthenticated.