Installation on Debian and Ubuntu

Minimal installations of Debian or Ubuntu may not contain all of the required package sources for the installation of Checkmk. Compare the following minimum requirements with the entries in your /etc/apt/sources.list, or the contents of the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory. Our examples use multi-line notation and access the central mirror server. Unless otherwise specified, the same requirements apply to older versions and to STS versions (Short Term Support). In this case, simply replace the code name. Update the local package index after checking or adapting the package sources:

First choose the Checkmk edition that suits your needs. On the download page you will find the Raw Edition, which is Open Source, and the Cloud Edition, which is free to use for up to 750 services. If you have a subscription, then you will find the installation packages in the customer portal.

We recommend the use of the latest stable Checkmk version. If you need an older version (for example, as the basis for restoring a backup), you can find it in the download archive. Make sure that the package you select exactly matches the installed Linux distribution and its version.

After you have downloaded the package, bring it to the Linux system on which Checkmk is to be installed. This can be done, for example, via the scp command line tool, which comes with every modern system — and which is also available in PowerShell on Windows 10. Additional programs such as WinSCP are usually not required.

The openssh-server package needs to be installed to be able to copy files to your future Checkmk server using the scp command. If that is not already the case, you can install this using the following command:

Once this has been done you can, for example, copy the Checkmk Raw Edition package for Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish using the below command:

All packages are signed using GnuPG. Through the use of this signature, on the one hand it can be verified whether the package really is from Checkmk, and on the other hand it can be verified that the package is complete.

Depending on which optional packages were installed during the setup of your distribution, you will need to install dpkg-sig including all of its dependencies for successful verification. To do so, simply enter the following command:

So that these signed packages can be installed in the usual way, as a one time only action you will need to import our public key so that the signature will be trusted. First, load the key directly from our website:

Then import the key to the list of trusted signatures. Under Debian and Ubuntu the following command is required:

Once the key has been added, you can verify the Checkmk package using the following command:

In some installations the signature check can fail with the following error:

If this is the case, the most probable cause is that the installed version of dpkg-sig does not know how to handle the package’s compression format. In this situation revert to gpg to verify the signature:

The warning generated here is only regarding the Checkmk public key, not for the signature on the package itself. The reason for this is that the key has not been signed by any other key the user already trusts — but this is not a problem in this case.

Afterwards you can install the Checkmk package using the following command. Be sure to pass the full file path to the DEB file after apt install:

After the successful installation of Checkmk, and all of its dependencies, you will have access to the omd command. With this command you are able to create and manage monitoring sites. You can request the installed version to verify your installation: