In this article, you will find the steps that you need to perform to install the HEIMDAL Agent on a Ubuntu/Debian machine. The current HEIMDAL Agent version has been tested on Ubuntu 18.04. LTS, 20.04 LTS, 22.04, 23.04, 24.04 LTS, 25.10, and 26.04. The installation process requires sudo permissions.
1. Installing the HEIMDAL Agent using the installation script
2. Installing the HEIMDAL Agent manually
INSTALLING THE HEIMDAL AGENT using the installation script
Starting with Ubuntu 22.04, the HEIMDAL Agent requires libssl1.0 or libssl1.1 to work. Before running the HEIMDAL Agent install script, you need to make sure you are running libssl1.0 or libssl1.1. In case it's not installed, you can install it using the steps below:
x86 processors
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl1.1_1.1.1f-1ubuntu2_i386.deb sudo dpkg -i libssl1.1_1.1.1f-1ubuntu2_i386.deb
x64 processors
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl1.1_1.1.1f-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i libssl1.1_1.1.1f-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb
1. Download the HEIMDAL Agent installation script from the following URL:
https://prodcdn.heimdalsecurity.com/setup-linux/install-heimdal.sh
You can achieve this from the Terminal by using the following command line:
wget "https://prodcdn.heimdalsecurity.com/setup-linux/install-heimdal.sh"
2. Make sure you are in the same folder where the HEIMDAL Agent installation script has been downloaded, and run the following command line:
sudo sh install-heimdal.sh -l "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
Replace 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 with your HEIMDAL license key (displayed in the HEIMDAL Dashboard -> Guide section).
3. To see if the HEIMDAL Agent is running, run the following command line:
sudo systemctl status heimdal-clienthost
INSTALLING THE HEIMDAL AGENT manually
A. Prerequisites and HEIMDAL repository
The prerequisites for the HEIMDAL Agent include a user account with sudo privileges, CA Certificates, cURL, Unzip, GnuPG, lsb_release, and netcat.
1. Open a Terminal window.
2. Run the sudo apt-get update command to download package information from all configured sources/repositories. Sources are often defined in the /etc/apt/sources.list file and other files located in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory.
3. Run the following commands to make sure you have all the requirements to install the HEIMDAL Agent.
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates sudo apt-get install curl sudo apt-get install unzip sudo apt-get install gnupg sudo apt-get install lsb-release sudo apt-get install netcat
All the prerequisites can be installed with a single command line:
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl unzip gnupg lsb-release netcat -y
4. Add the HEIMDAL public key by running the following command line:
curl https://linuxrepo.heimdalsecurity.com/pgp-key.public | sudo gpg --yes --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/heimdal-keyring.gpg
5. Add the HEIMDAL Security repository by running the following command line:
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/heimdal-keyring.gpg] https://linuxrepo.heimdalsecurity.com/apt-repo stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/heimdal.list
6. Run the sudo apt-get update command to download package information from all configured sources/repositories.
B. Installing the HEIMDAL Agent
1. Install the HEIMDAL Agent by running the following command line:
sudo apt-get install heimdal
2. Copy and paste the HEIMDAL license key and press Enter.After inserting the HEIMDAL license key, the script will download and install Dotnet 5 (in the /usr/share/heimdal-utils/dotnet directory) and the HEIMDAL Agent. If the installation succeeds, the HEIMDAL Agent will start in the background (as the HEIMDAL Agent does not have a GUI), and the service status can be checked using the following command line:
sudo systemctl status heimdal-clienthost