Self update beszel-agent

[flo82]

To update a beszel-agent I currently login to the client system and issue

/opt/beszel-agent/beszel-agent update
systemctl restart beszel-agent

Is it possible to update the agent from the beszel dashboard?

[henrygd]

Not currently. This would be difficult to implement because people are running it on different operating systems, with different configurations, different permissions, etc.

I'd recommend using a cron job or systemd timer to check for updates and restart the service if needed. I will add this functionality to the binary install script in the near future.

Option 1: Cron Job

Create a cron job to check for updates daily and only restart beszel-agent if the update output contains "Successfully updated".

Open the crontab editor:

crontab -e

Add the following cron job:

0 2 * * * /opt/beszel-agent/beszel-agent update | grep -q "Successfully updated" && systemctl restart beszel-agent

Option 2: Systemd Timer and Service

Compared to cron, systemd provides more control and makes it easier to monitor update attempts via systemd logs.

Create a systemd service unit file for the update process.

Create the file /etc/systemd/system/beszel-agent-update.service with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Update beszel-agent if needed
Wants=beszel-agent.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c '/opt/beszel-agent/beszel-agent update | grep -q "Successfully updated" && systemctl restart beszel-agent'

Create a systemd timer unit file to run the update daily.

Create the file /etc/systemd/system/beszel-agent-update.timer with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Run beszel-agent update daily

[Timer]
OnCalendar=daily
Persistent=true
RandomizedDelaySec=4h

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Enable and start the timer:

sudo systemctl enable beszel-agent-update.timer
sudo systemctl start beszel-agent-update.timer

Verify that the timer is active:

systemctl list-timers beszel-agent-update.timer

[flo82]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer. I was expecting something like this.
All my systems are loaded with ansible and are very similar. So I will update them with an ansible script.

I like beszel very much 👍 Keep up the good work!

[henrygd]

No worries, glad you find it useful. I'll convert this to a discussion in case anyone else is wondering about this.

In the next release I'll update the install script to ask the user if they want to enable automatic daily updates.