Question about Unified Agent supported systems

[Gavitron]

Hi, I was wondering if there is a reference somewhere that qualifies/documents the systems on which the Pulse Unified Agent is intended/supported to run? I've run through this repo, the supporting docs/, and the issue tracker, but couldn't find a cohesive list anywhere.

I ask this because while I was solving an issue I had with the unified agent installer on an immutable filesystem, I started to dig through the os/init/ro-fs detection mechanisms in the unified agent's install.sh script. I took a quick pass at homogenizing the detection routines, but I soon realized that I might be overthinking the intended installation target list, so I came here to re-scope.

As example, I noticed there were recent changes to support installation on newer versions of TrueNAS SCALE, but there's no mention of TrueNAS CORE devices. This led to a string of questions I realized I couldn't safely assume answers for, ie:

• Are CORE devices even supported?
• if so, should they be detected as TrueNAS, or FreeNAS?
• What about TrueNAS Enterprise?
• and speaking of BSD's: besides Darwin, should the Pulse installer detect BSD?
• what about BSD-ish Linuxes like Slackware? (besides Unraid that is)

The TrueNAS detection also tries to treat other immutable rootfs systems like "truenas" installs, (which is what bit me,) but I see room to make that process more adaptable, but then which immutable-root platforms should already be expected to work?

I'm posting this here as questions, because I feel like if I posted this as an issue, it would carry the unintended implication that I am asking for new features or bug-fix support, which I'm not. I'm just looking for some more information to reign myself in as I fiddle with the agent-installer's existing init-detection algorithms, so that I don't accidentally make something that's orthogonal to the actual project.

thanks!

[rcourtman]

Great question, and thanks for digging into this!

Officially Tested Platforms

The unified agent is primarily tested on:

• Proxmox VE (Debian-based) - primary target
• Debian/Ubuntu - standard Linux hosts
• Unraid - custom init handling
• TrueNAS SCALE - recent addition with immutable rootfs handling
• macOS (Darwin) - for development/testing

Explicitly Not Supported (Currently)

• TrueNAS CORE / FreeBSD - No native FreeBSD binary is built. CORE users would need to run the agent in a jail or VM.
• Other BSDs (OpenBSD, NetBSD) - Not tested, no builds
• Windows - Not supported

"It Might Work" Tier

• Other systemd-based distros (Fedora, RHEL, Arch, etc.) - Should work but not tested
• Alpine Linux - Might need musl build
• Slackware - Probably works if it has systemd or sysvinit

Immutable Rootfs Handling

The current approach tries to detect immutable rootfs and adjust (e.g., install to /var instead of /opt). This was added specifically for TrueNAS SCALE. If you are hitting issues with another immutable system, I would be interested to hear which one - we can add detection for it.

Contributing Improvements

If you want to improve the detection logic, go for it! The main goals are:

1. Do not break existing working platforms
2. Fail gracefully with a clear error on unsupported systems
3. Auto-detect and adapt where possible

Feel free to open a PR with improvements. If you are working on a specific platform, mention it and we can add it to the tested list once it works.

[Gavitron]

Thanks for the great information! The system on which I had issues was Flatcar, which is a coreos derivative with an immutable/declarative design. In my case, /opt/ is where I get persistence post-deploy, while /usr/local/ is r/o. I've got a fork setup where I just grafted in an --install-dir argument that overrides the default directory, but I let myself get carried away with refactoring the way the installer detects the init-system of the host, still maintaining support for your current set of systems & "specials", while leaving room to expand in the future. I'm at the "80% done, 80% remaining" stage of it currently, but will submit a PR as soon as I get it ready for constructive feedback.

Don't worry about adding flatcar support on my account, I got past it easily on my own, and I'll make sure others can benefit from my learnings asap. Thanks again, for the quick reply, and for Pulse in general.