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    Elastic Compute Service:Upgrade or disable automatic upgrades of Cloud Assistant Agent

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    Elastic Compute Service:Upgrade or disable automatic upgrades of Cloud Assistant Agent

    Last Updated:Dec 19, 2025

    The features available in Cloud Assistant depend on the agent version. If the current version does not support a feature that you need, you may need to upgrade the Cloud Assistant Agent. This topic describes how to upgrade the Cloud Assistant Agent and disable its automatic upgrades.

    Limits

    • The ECS instance on which you want to upgrade the Cloud Assistant Agent must be in the Running state.

    • The Cloud Assistant Agent must be installed. For more information, see Install the Cloud Assistant Agent.

    Automatic upgrades

    By default, the Cloud Assistant Agent runs the aliyun_assist_update upgrade program every 30 minutes. The program is located in one of the following paths:

    • Windows instances: C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\{VERSION}\aliyun_assist_update.exe

    • Linux instances: /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/{VERSION}/aliyun_assist_update

    Note

    {VERSION} represents the version number of the Cloud Assistant Agent. To view the version number, see Install the Cloud Assistant Agent.

    You can configure an automatic upgrade policy for the Cloud Assistant Agent to control the allowed upgrade time windows. This helps avoid service disruptions during peak business hours.

    1. Go to ECS console - ECS Cloud Assistant.

    2. In the upper-right corner of the Cloud Assistant page, click Settings.

      image

    3. In the Cloud Assistant Settings dialog box, click the Cloud Assistant Agent Upgrade Settings tab.

    4. Select the Cloud Assistant Agent Upgrade Settings check box. Set Period Allowed for Upgrade and Time Zone. Then, click OK.

      Note

      You can specify up to five time periods. The interval between any two time periods must be at least 1 hour.

      image

    Disable automatic upgrades

    • To disable automatic upgrades for a specific version of the Cloud Assistant Agent, you can either create a configuration file to disable automatic upgrades or rename the automatic upgrade program.

    • To disable automatic upgrades for all versions of the Cloud Assistant Agent, you must create a configuration file to disable automatic upgrades.

    Rename the automatic upgrade program

    You can rename the aliyun_assist_update file to disable automatic upgrades for the Cloud Assistant Agent.

    Note

    VERSION represents the version number of the Cloud Assistant Agent. To view the version number, see Install the Cloud Assistant Agent.

    • For Windows Server operating systems, run the following command in PowerShell to rename the aliyun_assist_update automatic upgrade program to aliyun_assist_update.bk.

      Rename-Item -Path 'C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\VERSION\aliyun_assist_update.exe' -NewName 'C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\VERSION\aliyun_assist_update.exe.bk'

    • For Linux operating systems, run the following command to rename the aliyun_assist_update automatic upgrade program to aliyun_assist_update.bk.

      mv /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/VERSION/aliyun_assist_update /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/VERSION/aliyun_assist_update.bk

    To resume automatic upgrades, rename the file back to aliyun_assist_update.

    • Windows Server systems:

      Rename-Item -Path 'C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\VERSION\aliyun_assist_update.exe.bk' -NewName 'C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\VERSION\aliyun_assist_update.exe'

    • Linux systems:

      mv /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/VERSION/aliyun_assist_update.bk /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/VERSION/aliyun_assist_update

    Create configuration files to disable automatic upgrades

    For Cloud Assistant Agent 2.2.1.140 or later on Linux and Cloud Assistant Agent 2.1.1.140 or later on Windows, you can create a configuration file in a specified path using Cloud Assistant Agent to disable upgrades for Cloud Assistant Agent:

    Step 1: Disable the Cloud Assistant Agent from checking for upgrades on startup

    You can create the disable_bootstrap_update file in the `config` directory of the Cloud Assistant Agent installation directory to disable the startup upgrade check for the current version of the Cloud Assistant Agent, or in the `config` directory of the cross-version directory to disable the startup upgrade check for all versions of the Cloud Assistant Agent on the local machine. You do not need to add any content to the disable_bootstrap_update file.

    • Windows Server systems: Run the following command in PowerShell.

      # Execute the following command to disable the startup upgrade check for a specific version of the Cloud Assistant Agent.
New-Item -Path 'C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\VERSION\config\disable_bootstrap_update'
# Execute the following command to disable the startup upgrade check for all versions of the Cloud Assistant Agent.
New-Item -Path 'C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\config\disable_bootstrap_update'

    • Linux systems: Run the following command.

      # Execute the following command to disable the startup upgrade check for a specific version of the Cloud Assistant Agent.
touch /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/VERSION/config/disable_bootstrap_update
# Execute the following command to disable the startup upgrade check for all versions of the Cloud Assistant Agent.
touch /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/config/disable_bootstrap_update
    Note

    VERSION represents the version number of the Cloud Assistant Agent. To view the version number, see Install the Cloud Assistant Agent.

    Step 2: Disable the Cloud Assistant Agent's automatic update check

    In the `config` directory of the Cloud Assistant Agent installation directory, you can create the disable_update file to disable automatic upgrades for that specific version of the Cloud Assistant Agent. In the `config` directory of the cross-version directory, you can create this file to disable automatic upgrades for all versions of the Cloud Assistant Agent on the local machine. The disable_update file can be empty.

    • Windows Server systems: Run the following command in PowerShell.

      # The following command disables automatic upgrades for a specific version of the Cloud Assistant Agent.
New-Item -Path C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\VERSION\config\disable_update
# The following command disables automatic upgrades for all versions of the Cloud Assistant Agent.
New-Item -Path C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\config\disable_update

    • Linux systems: Run the following command.

      # The following command disables automatic upgrades for a specific version of the Cloud Assistant Agent.
touch /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/VERSION/config/disable_update
# The following command disables automatic upgrades for all versions of the Cloud Assistant Agent.
touch /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/config/disable_update
    Note

    VERSION represents the version number of the Cloud Assistant Agent. To view the version number, see Install the Cloud Assistant Agent.

    To resume automatic upgrades, delete the disable_update and disable_bootstrap_update configuration files.

    • Windows Server systems: Run the following command in PowerShell.

      Remove-Item -Path C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\VERSION\config\disable_update
Remove-Item -Path C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\config\disable_update

Remove-Item -Path C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\VERSION\config\disable_bootstrap_update
Remove-Item -Path C:\ProgramData\aliyun\assist\config\disable_bootstrap_update

    • Linux systems: Run the following command.

      rm /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/VERSION/config/disable_update
rm /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/config/disable_update

rm /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/VERSION/config/disable_bootstrap_update
rm /usr/local/share/aliyun-assist/config/disable_bootstrap_update

    Manual upgrade

    Note

    For information about the features that Cloud Assistant supports and the minimum agent versions required, see Supported features and versions.

    Upgrade using public commands

    If automatic upgrades fail, you can run public commands to upgrade the agent.

    Important

    The following steps use the console as an example. To run public Cloud Assistant commands by calling OpenAPI or using the command-line interface (CLI), see View and run public commands.

    1. Go to ECS console - ECS Cloud Assistant.

    2. On the Cloud Assistant page, click the Common Commands tab.

    3. Find the latest version of one of the following public commands and click Run.

      • Linux instances: ACS-ECS-UpdateAliyunAssist-linux.sh.

      • Windows instances: ACS-ECS-UpdateAliyunAssist-windows.ps1.

        image.png

    4. In the Run Command panel, configure the parameters and click Run.

      • Execution Plan: Select a time to run the command. For more information, see Execution plan details.

      • Select Instance: Select the instances on which to upgrade the Cloud Assistant client. The instances must be running and have the Cloud Assistant client installed.

        For more information about the parameters, see View and run public commands.

      If the execution result is similar to the one shown in the following figure, the Cloud Assistant Agent is upgraded successfully.image.png

    Note

    If the public command fails to run, view the error message and fix the issue based on the diagnostic information. For more information, see Common errors and troubleshooting for failed executions.

    Upgrade by manually downloading the installation package

    You can also manually download and install the latest package to upgrade the agent. For more information about installation methods, see Install the Cloud Assistant Agent.

    Example: For a Linux instance that uses the x86 architecture, run the following command to download and install the latest Cloud Assistant installation package. This example uses an RPM package.

    wget "https://aliyun-client-assist.oss-accelerate.aliyuncs.com/linux/aliyun_assist_latest.rpm" && sudo rpm -ivh --force aliyun_assist_latest.rpm

    Highest upgradeable Cloud Assistant Agent versions for specific kernel versions

    Instance kernel version number

    Highest upgradeable Cloud Assistant Agent version

    Linux kernel version earlier than 2.6.32

    • x86/x64 architecture: 2.2.3.398

    • ARM architecture: 2.4.3.398

    FreeBSD 11 or earlier (kernel version earlier than 12.x)

    2.3.3.529