Basic Agent Usage for CentOS, Rocky, and Alma Linux

Docs > Agent > Basic Agent Usage > Basic Agent Usage for CentOS, Rocky, and Alma Linux

Overview

This page outlines the basic features of the Datadog Agent for CentOS and its derivatives, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux. To install the Datadog Agent, follow the Agent Installation Instructions for CentOS.

Packages are available for 64-bit x86 and Arm v8 architectures. For other architectures, use the source install.

Note: CentOS 6 and above are supported on the 64-bit x86 architecture. CentOS/Rocky/Alma 8 and above are supported on the 64-bit Arm v8 architecture.

Commands

In Agent v6 and v7, the service manager provided by the operating system is responsible for the Agent lifecycle, while other commands must be run through the Agent binary directly. In Agent v5, almost everything is done through the service manager.

CentOS 7 and higher

Description	Command
Start Agent as a service	`sudo systemctl start datadog-agent`
Stop Agent running as a service	`sudo systemctl stop datadog-agent`
Restart Agent running as a service	`sudo systemctl restart datadog-agent`
Status of Agent service	`sudo systemctl status datadog-agent`
Status page of running Agent	`sudo datadog-agent status`
Send flare	`sudo datadog-agent flare`
Display command usage	`sudo datadog-agent --help`
Run a check	`sudo -u dd-agent -- datadog-agent check <CHECK_NAME>`

CentOS 6

Description	Command
Start Agent as a service	`sudo start datadog-agent`
Stop Agent running as a service	`sudo stop datadog-agent`
Restart Agent running as a service	`sudo restart datadog-agent`
Status of Agent service	`sudo status datadog-agent`
Status page of running Agent	`sudo datadog-agent status`
Send flare	`sudo datadog-agent flare`
Display command usage	`sudo datadog-agent --help`
Run a check	`sudo -u dd-agent -- datadog-agent check <CHECK_NAME>`

Note: If the service wrapper is not available on your system, use:

On upstart-based systems: sudo start/stop/restart/status datadog-agent
On systemd-based systems: sudo systemctl start/stop/restart/status datadog-agent

Configuration

The configuration files and folders for the Agent are located in:

/etc/datadog-agent/datadog.yaml

Configuration files for Integrations:

/etc/datadog-agent/conf.d/

Uninstall the Agent

To uninstall the Agent, run the following command:

sudo yum remove datadog-agent

This command removes the Agent, but does not remove:

The datadog.yaml configuration file
User-created files in the /etc/datadog-agent configuration folder
User-created files in the /opt/datadog-agent folder
The dd-agent user
Datadog log files

If you also want to remove these elements, run this command after removing the Agent:

sudo userdel dd-agent \
&& sudo rm -rf /opt/datadog-agent/ \
&& sudo rm -rf /etc/datadog-agent/ \
&& sudo rm -rf /var/log/datadog/

Uninstall Single Step APM Instrumentation

If you installed the Agent with Single Step APM Instrumentation, and you want to uninstall the Agent, you need to run additional commands to uninstall APM Instrumentation.

Troubleshooting

See the Agent Troubleshooting documentation.

Working with the embedded Agent

The Agent contains an embedded Python environment at /opt/datadog-agent/embedded/. Common binaries such as python and pip are contained within /opt/datadog-agent/embedded/bin/.

See the instructions on how to add packages to the embedded Agent for more information.