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Windows Agent Installation

access_time Updated Mar 24, 2023

The Signal Sciences Agent is a small daemon process which provides the interface between your web server and our analysis platform. An inbound web request is passed to the agent, the agent then decides whether the requests should be permitted to continue or whether we should take action.

  1. Create an empty agent configuration file at C:\Program Files\Signal Sciences\Agent\agent.conf.

    • If you need to specify a custom location for the agent.conf file, set the absolute file path with the system environment variable SIGSCI_CONFIG.
    • If you are deploying the agent in reverse proxy mode, see the Reverse Proxy Mode configuration page for details on required configuration options.

  2. Configure the agent by inputting the Agent Access Key and Agent Secret Key into the agent configuration file at C:\Program Files\Signal Sciences\Agent\agent.conf.

    1. Log in to the Signal Sciences console.

    2. Select a site if you have more than one site.

    3. Click Agents in the navigation bar. The agents page appears.

    4. Click View agent keys. The agent keys window appears.

      View agent keys’ button.

    5. Copy the Agent Access Key and Agent Secret Key.

      The agent keys window.

    6. Enter the Agent Access Key and Agent Secret Key into C:\Program Files\Signal Sciences\Agent\agent.conf.

      accesskeyid = "AGENTACCESSKEYHERE"
secretaccesskey = "AGENTSECRETACCESSKEYHERE"

  3. Download the latest Signal Sciences Windows Agent .msi from https://dl.signalsciences.net/?prefix=sigsci-agent/.

  4. Run the .msi to install the Agent automatically with no prompts. It will install the executable in C:\Program Files\Signal Sciences\Agent, add a service entry for the Agent, and start the service if the agent configuration file is present with valid accesskeyid and secretaccesskey settings.

    The installed service name is sigsci-agent and can be controlled with PowerShell cmdlets:

    Start-Service sigsci-agent
Restart-Service sigsci-agent
Stop-Service sigsci-agent

    Alternatively, you can download the latest Signal Sciences Windows Agent as a .zip file, which contains the agent binary. You can run this from any location you prefer. However, to install the agent in this way, you will need to configure the Service entry and start the service manually.

Example services.msc screenshot:

Example ‘services.msc’ screenshot with the ‘Signal Sciences Agent’ service highlighted.

Next Steps

Explore our module options and install the Signal Sciences module.