Installing Buildkite Agent on Debian

The Buildkite Agent is supported on Debian versions 8 and above using our signed apt repository.

Installation

Firstly, ensure your list of packages is up to date:

sudo apt-get update

Next, ensure you have the apt-transport-https package installed for the HTTPS package repository, and the dirmngr package installed for adding the signing key:

sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https dirmngr

Now you can add our signed apt repository. The default version of the agent is stable, but you can get the beta version by using unstable instead of stable in the following command, or the agent built from the main branch of the repository by using experimental instead of stable.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys 32A37959C2FA5C3C99EFBC32A79206696452D198
echo "deb https://apt.buildkite.com/buildkite-agent stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/buildkite-agent.list

Then install the agent:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y buildkite-agent

Configure your agent token:

sudo sed -i "s/xxx/INSERT-YOUR-AGENT-TOKEN-HERE/g" /etc/buildkite-agent/buildkite-agent.cfg

And then start the agent:

sudo systemctl enable buildkite-agent && sudo systemctl start buildkite-agent

You can view the logs at:

sudo journalctl -f -u buildkite-agent

SSH Key Configuration

SSH keys should be copied to (or generated into) /var/lib/buildkite-agent/.ssh/. For example, to generate a new private key which you can add to your source code host:

$ sudo su buildkite-agent
$ mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cd ~/.ssh
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "build@myorg.com"

See the Agent SSH Keys documentation for more details.

File Locations

• Configuration: /etc/buildkite-agent/buildkite-agent.cfg
• Agent Hooks: /etc/buildkite-agent/hooks/
• Builds: /var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/
• Logs, depending on your system:
  • journalctl -f -u buildkite-agent (systemd)
  • /var/log/upstart/buildkite-agent.log (upstart)
  • /var/log/buildkite-agent.log (older systems)

• Agent user home: /var/lib/buildkite-agent/
• SSH keys: /var/lib/buildkite-agent/.ssh/

Configuration

The configuration file is located at /etc/buildkite-agent/buildkite-agent.cfg. See the configuration documentation for an explanation of each configuration setting.

Running multiple agents

You can run as many parallel agents on the one machine as you wish by duplicating the systemd/upstart service configuration file, for example:

# Disable the default unit
sudo systemctl stop buildkite-agent && sudo systemctl disable buildkite-agent

# Create a systemd template
sudo cp /lib/systemd/system/buildkite-agent.service /etc/systemd/system/buildkite-agent@.service

# Now, as many times as you like
sudo systemctl enable buildkite-agent@1 && sudo systemctl start buildkite-agent@1
sudo systemctl enable buildkite-agent@2 && sudo systemctl start buildkite-agent@2

# Follow them all
sudo journalctl -f -u "buildkite-agent@*"

# Or one-by-one
sudo journalctl -f -u buildkite-agent@2

Upgrading

The Buildkite Agent can be upgraded like any other system package:

sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade