FAQ

Using Fleet

How can I switch to Fleet from Kolide Fleet?

To migrate to Fleet from Kolide Fleet, please follow the steps outlined in the Upgrading Fleet section of the documentation.

Has anyone stress tested Fleet? How many hosts can the Fleet server handle?

Fleet has been stress tested to 150,000 online hosts and 400,000 total enrolled hosts. Production deployments exist with over 100,000 hosts and numerous production deployments manage tens of thousands of hosts.

It’s standard deployment practice to have multiple Fleet servers behind a load balancer. However, typically the MySQL database is the performance bottleneck and a single Fleet server can handle tens of thousands of hosts.

Can I target my hosts using their enroll secrets?

No, currently, there’s no way to retrieve the name of the enroll secret with a query. This means that there's no way to create a label using your hosts' enroll secrets and then use this label as a target for live queries or scheduled queries.

Typically folks will use some other unique identifier to create labels that distinguish each type of device. As a workaround, Fleet's manual labels provide a way to create groups of hosts without a query. These manual labels can then be used as targets for queries.

There is, however, a way to accomplish this even though the answer to the question remains "no": Teams. As of Fleet v4.0.0, you can group hosts in Teams either by enrolling them with a team specific secret, or by transferring hosts to a team. One the hosts you want to target are part of a team, you can create a query and target the team in question.

How often do labels refresh? Is the refresh frequency configurable?

The update frequency for labels is configurable with the —osquery_label_update_interval flag (default 1 hour).

Can I modify built-in labels?

While it is possible to modify built-in labels using fleetctl or the REST API, doing so is not recommended because it can lead to errors in the Fleet UI. Find more information here.

How do I revoke the authorization tokens for a user?

Authorization tokens are revoked when the “require password reset” action is selected for that user. User-initiated password resets do not expire the existing tokens.

How do I monitor the performance of my queries?

Fleet can live query the osquery_schedule table. Performing this live query allows you to get the performance data for your scheduled queries. Also consider scheduling a query to the osquery_schedule table to get these logs into your logging pipeline.

How do I monitor a Fleet server?

Fleet provides standard interfaces for monitoring and alerting. See the Monitoring Fleet documentation for details.

Why is the “Add User” button disabled?

The “Add User” button is disabled if SMTP (email) has not been configured for the Fleet server. Currently, there is no way to add new users without email capabilities.

One way to hack around this is to use a simulated mailserver like Mailhog. You can retrieve the email that was “sent” in the Mailhog UI, and provide users with the invite URL manually.

Can I disable password-based authentication in the Fleet UI?

Some folks like to enforce users with SAML SSO enabled to login only via the SSO and not via password.

There is no option in the Fleet UI for disabling password-based authentication. However, users that have SSO enabled in Fleet will not be able to log in via password-based authentication.

If a user has SSO enabled, the Login page in the Fleet UI displays the “Email” and “Password” fields but on attempted password-based login, this user will receive an “Authentication failed” message.

Where are my query results?

Live queries

Live query results (executed in the web UI or fleetctl query) are pushed directly to the UI where the query is running. The results never go to a file unless you as the user manually save them.

Scheduled queries

Scheduled query results from enrolled hosts can be logged by Fleet. For results to go to Fleet, the osquery --logger_plugin flag must be set to tls.

What are my options for storing the osquery logs?

Folks typically use Fleet to ship logs to data aggregation systems like Splunk, the ELK stack, and Graylog.

Fleet supports multiple logging destinations for scheduled query results and status logs. The --osquery_result_log_plugin and --osquery_status_log_plugin can be set to: filesystem, firehose, kinesis, lambda, pubsub, kafkarest, and stdout. See:

• https://fleetdm.com/docs/deploying/configuration#osquery-result-log-plugin.
• https://fleetdm.com/docs/deploying/configuration#osquery-status-log-plugin.

Troubleshooting

Expecting results, but not seeing anything in the logs?

• Try scheduling a query that always returns results (eg. SELECT * FROM time).
• Check whether the query is scheduled in differential mode. If so, new results will only be logged when the result set changes.
• Ensure that the query is scheduled to run on the intended platforms, and that the tables queried are supported by those platforms.
• Use live query to SELECT * FROM osquery_schedule to check whether the query has been scheduled on the host.
• Look at the status logs provided by osquery. In a standard configuration these are available on the filesystem of the Fleet server at the path configurable by --filesystem_status_log_file. This defaults to /tmp/osquery_status. The host will output a status log each time it executes the query.

Why does the same query come back faster sometimes?

Don't worry, this behavior is expected; it's part of how osquery works.

Fleet and osquery work together by communicating with heartbeats. Depending on how close the next heartbeat is, Fleet might return results a few seconds faster or slower.

By the way, to get around a phenomena called the "thundering herd problem", these heartbeats aren't exactly the same number of seconds apart each time. osquery implements a "splay", a few ± milliseconds that are added to or subtracted from the heartbeat interval to prevent these thundering herds. This helps prevent situations where many thousands of devices might unnecessarily attempt to communicate with the Fleet server at exactly the same time. (If you've ever used Socket.io, a similar phenomena can occur with that tool's automatic WebSocket reconnects.)

Why don't my query results appear sorted based upon the ORDER BY clause I specified in my SQL query?

When a query executes in Fleet, the query is sent to all hosts at the same time, but results are returned from hosts at different times. In Fleet, results are shown as soon as Fleet receives a response from a host. Fleet does not sort the overall results across all hosts (the sort UI toggle is used for this). Instead, Fleet prioritizes speed when displaying the results. This means that if you use an ORDER BY clause selection criteria in a query, the results may not initially appear with your desired order, however, the sort UI toggle allows you to sort by ascending or descending order for any of the displayed columns.

What happens if I have a query on a team policy and I also have it scheduled to run separately?

Both queries will run as scheduled on applicable hosts. If there are any hosts that both the scheduled run and the policy apply to, they will be queried twice.

Why aren’t my live queries being logged?

Live query results are never logged to the filesystem of the Fleet server. See Where are my query results?.

Why does my query work locally with osquery but not in Fleet?

If you're seeing query results using osqueryi but not through Fleet, the most likely culprit is a permissions issue. Check out the osquery docs for more details and instructions for setting up Full Disk Access.

Can I use the Fleet API to fetch results from a scheduled query?

You cannot. Scheduled query results are logged to whatever logging plugin you have configured and are not stored in the Fleet DB.

However, the Fleet API exposes a significant amount of host information via the api/v1/fleet/hosts and the api/v1/fleet/hosts/{id} API endpoints. The api/v1/fleet/hosts can even be configured to return additional host information.

For example, let's say you want to retrieve a host's OS version, installed software, and kernel version:

Each host’s OS version is available using the api/v1/fleet/hosts API endpoint. Check out the API documentation for this endpoint.

It’s possible in Fleet to retrieve each host’s kernel version, using the Fleet API, through additional_queries. The Fleet configuration options YAML file includes an additional_queries property that allows you to append custom query results to the host details returned by the api/v1/fleet/hosts endpoint. Check out an example configuration file with the additional_queries field.

Why is my host not updating a policy's response?

The following are reasons why a host may not be updating a policy's response:

• The policy's query includes tables that are not compatible with this host's platform. For example, if your policy's query contains the apps table, which is only compatible on hosts running macOS, this policy will not update its response if this host is running Windows or Linux.

• The policy's query includes invalid SQL syntax. If your policy's query includes invalid syntax, this policy will not update its response. You can check the syntax of your query by heading to the Queries page, selecting your query, and then selecting "Save."

What should I do if my computer is showing up as an offline host?

If your device is showing up as an offline host in the Fleet instance, and you're sure that the computer has osquery running, we recommend trying the following:

• Try un-enrolling and re-enrolling the host. You can do this by uninstalling osquery on the host and then enrolling your device again using one of the recommended methods.

How does Fleet deal with IP duplication?

Fleet relies on UUIDs so any overlap with host IP addresses should not cause a problem. The only time this might be an issue is if you are running a query that involves a specific IP address that exists in multiple locations as it might return multiple results - Fleet's teams feature can be used to restrict queries to specific hosts.

Can fleetd run alongside osquery?

Yes, fleetd can be run alongside an existing, separately-installed osqueryd. If you have an existing osqueryd installed on a given host, you don't have to remove it prior to installing fleetd. The osquery instance provided by fleetd uses its own database directory that doesn't interfere with other osquery isntances installed on the host.

Can I control how fleetd handles updates?

Yes, auto-updates can be disabled entirely by passing --disable-updates as a flag when running fleetctl package to generate your installer (easy) or by deploying a modified systemd file to your hosts (more complicated). We'd recommend the flag:

fleetctl package --fleetctl package --type=deb --fleet-url=https://localhost:8080 --enroll-secret=superRandomSecret --disable-updates

You can also indicate the channels you would like Fleetd to watch for updates using the --orbit-channel, --desktop-channel , and --osqueryd-channel flags:

fleetctl package --fleetctl package --type=deb --fleet-url=https://localhost:8080 --enroll-secret=superRandomSecret --orbit-channel=edge --desktop-channel=stable --osqueryd-channel=4

You can specify a major (4), minor (4.0) or patch (4.6.0) version as well as the stable or edge channels.

When will the newest version of osquery be available to Fleetd?

When a new osquery version is released, it is pushed to the edge channel for beta testing. As soon as that version is deemed stable by the osquery project, it is moved to the stable channel. Some versions may take a little longer than others to be tested and moved from edge to stable, especially when there are major changes.

Where does Fleetd get update information?

Fleetd checks for update metadata and downloads binaries at tuf.fleetctl.com.

Can I bundle osquery extensions into Fleetd?

This isn't supported yet, but we're working on it!

What happens to osquery logs if my Fleet server or my logging destination is offline?

If Fleet can't send logs to the destination, it will return an error to osquery. This causes osquery to retry sending the logs. The logs will then be stored in osquery's internal buffer until they are sent successfully, or they get expired if the buffered_log_max(defaults to 1,000,000 logs) is exceeded. Check out the Remote logging buffering section on the osquery docs for more on this behavior.

How does Fleet work with osquery extensions?

Any extension table available in a host enrolled to Fleet can be queried by Fleet. Note that the "compatible with" message may show an error because it won't know your extension table, but the query will still work, and Fleet will gracefully ignore errors from any incompatible hosts.

Why do I see "Unknown Certificate Error" when adding hosts to my dev server?

If you are using a self-signed certificate on localhost, add the --insecure flag when building your installation packages:

fleetctl package --fleetctl package --type=deb --fleet-url=https://localhost:8080 --enroll-secret=superRandomSecret --insecure

Can I hide known vulnerabilities that I feel are insignificant?

This isn't currently supported, but we're working on it! You can track that issue here.

Can I create reports based on historical data in Fleet?

Currently, Fleet only stores the current state of your hosts (when they last communicated with Fleet). The best way at the moment to maintain historical data would be to use the REST API or the fleetctl CLI to retrieve it manually. Then save the data you need to your schedule.

When do I need fleetctl vs. the REST API vs. the Fleet UI?

fleetctl is great for users that like to do things in a terminal (like iTerm on a Mac). Lots of tech folks are real power users of the terminal. It is also helpful for automating things like deployments.

The REST API is somewhat similar to fleetctl, but it tends to be used more by other computer programs rather than human users (although humans can use it too). For example, our Fleet UI talks to the server via the REST API. Folks can also use the REST API if they want to build their own programs that talk to the Fleet server.

The Fleet UI is built for human users to make interfacing with the Fleet server user-friendly and visually appealing. It also makes things simpler and more accessible to a broader range of users.

How do I issue MDM commands with fleetctl and an applied --context option?

fleetctl allows users to maintain a context for the environment that they are logging into. This is useful when maintaining a development / staging / production workflow. When issuing MDM commands in combination with the --context option, please use the following syntax:

fleetctl mdm --context dev run-command --payload=restart-device.xml --host=hostname

Why can't I run queries with fleetctl using a new API-only user?

In versions prior to Fleet 4.13, a password reset is needed before a new API-only user can perform queries. You can find detailed instructions for setting that up here.

Can I audit actions taken in Fleet?

The REST API activities endpoint provides a full breakdown of actions taken on queries, policies, and teams (Available in Fleet Premium) through the UI, the REST API, or fleetctl.

How often is the software inventory updated?

By default, Fleet will query hosts for software inventory hourly. If you'd like to set a different interval, you can update the periodicity in your vulnerabilities configuration.

Can I group results from multiple hosts?

There are a few ways you can go about getting counts of hosts that meet specific criteria using the REST API. You can use GET /api/v1/fleet/hosts or the fleetctl CLI to gather a list of all hosts and then work with that data however you'd like. For example, you could retrieve all hosts using fleetctl get hosts and then use jq to pull out the data you need. The following example would give you a count of hosts by their OS version:

$ fleetctl get hosts --json | jq '.spec .os_version' | sort | uniq -c

   1 "CentOS Stream 8.0.0"
   2 "Ubuntu 20.4.0"
   1 "macOS 11.5.2"
   1 "macOS 11.6.3"
   1 "macOS 12.1.0"
   3 "macOS 12.2.1"
   3 "macOS 12.3.0"
   6 "macOS 12.3.1"

How do I downgrade from Fleet Premium to Fleet Free?

If you'd like to renew your Fleet Premium license key, please contact us here.

Back up your users and update all team-level users to global users

1. Run the fleetctl get user_roles > user_roles.yml command. Save the user_roles.yml file so that, if you choose to upgrade later, you can restore user roles.
2. Head to the Settings > Users page in the Fleet UI.
3. For each user that has any team listed under the Teams column, select Actions > Edit, then select Global user, and then select Save. If a user shouldn't have global access, delete this user.

Move all team-level scheduled queries to the global level

1. Head to the Schedule page in the Fleet UI.
2. For each scheduled query that belongs to a team, copy the name in the Query column, select All teams in the top dropdown, select Schedule a query, past the name in the Select query field, choose the frequency, and select Schedule.
3. Delete each scheduled query that belongs to a team because they will no longer run on any hosts following the downgrade process.

Move all team level policies to the global level

1. Head to the Policies page in the Fleet UI.
2. For each policy that belongs to a team, copy the Name, Description, Resolve, and Query. Then, select All teams in the top dropdown, select Add a policy, select create your own policy, paste each item in the appropriate field, and select Save.
3. Delete each policy that belongs to a team because they will no longer run on any hosts following the downgrade process.

Back up your teams

1. Run the fleetctl get teams > teams.yml command. Save the teams.yml file so that, if you choose to upgrade later, you can restore teams.
2. Head to the Settings > Teams page in the Fleet UI.
3. Delete all teams. This will move all hosts to the global level.

Remove your Fleet Premium license key

1. Remove your license key from your Fleet configuration. Documentation on where the license key is located in your configuration is here.
2. Restart your Fleet server.

If I use a software orchestration tool (Ansible, Chef, Puppet, etc.) to manage agent options, do I have to apply the same options in the Fleet UI?

No. The agent options set using your software orchestration tool will override the default agent options that appear in the Settings > Organization settings > Agent options page. On this page, if you hit the Save button, the options that appear in the Fleet UI will override the agent options set using your software orchestration.

How can I uninstall the osquery agent?

To uninstall the osquery agent, follow the below instructions for your operating system.

MacOS

Run the Orbit cleanup script

Windows

Use the "Add or remove programs" dialog to remove Orbit.

Ubuntu

Run sudo apt remove fleet-osquery -y

CentOS

Run sudo rpm -e fleet-osquery-X.Y.Z.x86_64

How does Fleet determines online and offline status?

Online hosts

Online hosts will respond to a live query.

A host is online if it has connected successfully in a window of time set by distributed_interval (or config_tls_refresh, whichever is smaller). A buffer of 60 seconds is added to the calculation to avoid unnecessary flapping between online/offline status (in case hosts take a bit longer than expected to connect to Fleet). The values for distributed_interval and config_tls_refresh can be found in the Settings > Organization settings > Agent options page for global hosts and in the Settings > Teams > TEAM NAME > Agent options page for hosts that belong to a team.

For example:

distributed_interval=10, config_tls_refresh=30 A host is considered online if it has connected to Fleet in the last 70 (10+60) seconds.

distributed_interval=30, config_tls_refresh=20 A host is considered online if it has connected to Fleet in the last 80 (20+60) seconds.

Offline hosts

Offline hosts won't respond to a live query. These hosts may be shut down, asleep, or not connected to the internet. A host could also be offline if there is a connection issue between the osquery agent running in the host and Fleet (see What should I do if my computer is showing up as an offline host?).

Why aren't "additional queries" being applied to hosts enrolled in a team?

Changes were introduced in Fleet v4.20.0 that caused the features.additional_queries set in at the global level to no longer apply to hosts assigned to a team. If you would like those queries to be applied to hosts assigned to a team, you will need to be include these queries under features.additional_queries in each team's configuration.

Why am I seeing an error when using the after key in api/v1/fleet/hosts?

There is a bug in MySQL validation in some versions of Fleet when using the created_at and updated_at columns as order_key along with an after filter. Adding h. to the column in order_key will return your results.

{host}/api/v1/fleet/hosts?order_key=h.created_at&order_direction=desc&after=2022-10-22T20:22:03Z

What can I do if Fleet is slow or unresponsive after enabling a feature?

Depending on your infrastructure capabilities, and the number of hosts enrolled into your Fleet instance, Fleet might be slow or unresponsive after globally enabling a feature like software inventory.

In those cases, we recommend a slow rollout by partially enabling the feature by teams using the features key of the teams configuration.

Why am I getting errors when generating a .msi package on my M1 Mac?

There are many challenges to generating .msi packages on any OS but Windows. Errors will frequently resolve after multiple attempts and we've added retries by default in recent versions of fleetctl package. Package creation is much more reliable on Intel Macs, Linux and Windows.

Where did the "Packs" page go?

Packs are a function of osquery that provide a portable format to import/export queries in and out of platforms like Fleet. The "Packs" section of the UI that began with kolide/fleet c. 2017 was an early attempt at fulfilling this vision, but it soon became clear that it wasn't the right interface for segmenting and targeting hosts in Fleet.

Instead, 2017 "packs" functionality has been combined with the concept of queries. Queries now have built-in schedule features, and (in Fleet premium) can target specific groups of hosts via teams.

The "Packs" section of the UI has been removed, but access via the API and CLI is still available for backwards compatibility. The fleetctl upgrade-packs command can be used to convert existing 2017 "packs" to queries.

Read more about osquery packs and Fleet's commitment to supporting them here.

What happens when I turn off MDM?

In the Fleet UI, you can turn off MDM for a host by selecting Actions > Turn off MDM on the Host details page.

When you turn off MDM for a host, Fleet removes the enforcement of all macOS settings for that host. Also, the host will stop receiving macOS update reminders via Nudge. Turning MDM off doesn't remove the fleetd agent from the host. To remove the fleetd agent, share these guided instructions with the end user.

To enforce macOS settings and send macOS update reminders, the host has to turn MDM back on. Turning MDM back on for a host requires end user action.

What does "package root files: heat failed" mean?

We've found this error when you try to build an MSI on Docker 4.17. The underlying issue has been fixed in Docker 4.18, so we recommend upgrading. More information here

Deployment

• How do I get support for working with Fleet?
• Can multiple instances of the Fleet server be run behind a load-balancer?
• Why aren't my osquery agents connecting to Fleet?
• How do I fix "certificate verify failed" errors from osqueryd?
• What do I need to do to change the Fleet server TLS certificate?
• How do I migrate hosts from one Fleet server to another (eg. testing to production)?
• What do I do about "too many open files" errors?
• Can I skip versions when updating Fleet to the latest version?
• I upgraded my database, but Fleet is still running slowly. What could be going on?
• Why am I receiving a database connection error when attempting to "prepare" the database?
• Is Fleet available as a SaaS product?
• What MySQL versions are supported?
• What are the MySQL user access requirements?
• Does Fleet support MySQL replication?
• What is duplicate enrollment and how do I fix it?
• What API endpoints should I expose to the public internet?
• What Redis versions are supported?
• Will my older version of Fleet work with Redis 6?

How do I get support for working with Fleet?

For bug reports, please use the Github issue tracker.

For questions and discussion, please join us in the #fleet channel of osquery Slack.

Can multiple instances of the Fleet server be run behind a load-balancer?

Yes. Fleet scales horizontally out of the box as long as all of the Fleet servers are connected to the same MySQL and Redis instances.

Note that osquery logs will be distributed across the Fleet servers.

Read the performance documentation for more.

Why aren't my osquery agents connecting to Fleet?

This can be caused by a variety of problems. The best way to debug is usually to add --verbose --tls_dump to the arguments provided to osqueryd and look at the logs for the server communication.

Common problems

• Connection refused: The server is not running, or is not listening on the address specified. Is the server listening on an address that is available from the host running osquery? Do you have a load balancer that might be blocking connections? Try testing with curl.
• No node key returned: Typically this indicates that the osquery client sent an incorrect enroll secret that was rejected by the server. Check what osquery is sending by looking in the logs near this error.
• certificate verify failed: See How do I fix "certificate verify failed" errors from osqueryd.
• bad record MAC: When generating your certificate for your Fleet server, ensure you set the hostname to the FQDN or the IP of the server. This error is common when setting up Fleet servers and accepting defaults when generating certificates using openssl.

How do I fix "certificate verify failed" errors from osqueryd?

Osquery requires that all communication between the agent and Fleet are over a secure TLS connection. For the safety of osquery deployments, there is no (convenient) way to circumvent this check.

• Try specifying the path to the full certificate chain used by the server using the --tls_server_certs flag in osqueryd. This is often unnecessary when using a certificate signed by an authority trusted by the system, but is mandatory when working with self-signed certificates. In all cases it can be a useful debugging step.
• Ensure that the CNAME or one of the Subject Alternate Names (SANs) on the certificate matches the address at which the server is being accessed. If osquery connects via https://localhost:443, but the certificate is for https://fleet.example.com, the verification will fail.
• Is Fleet behind a load-balancer? Ensure that if the load-balancer is terminating TLS, this is the certificate provided to osquery.
• Does the certificate verify with curl? Try curl -v -X POST https://fleetserver:port/api/v1/osquery/enroll.

What do I need to do to change the Fleet server TLS certificate?

If both the existing and new certificates verify with osquery's default root certificates (such as a certificate issued by a well-known Certificate Authority) and no certificate chain was deployed with osquery, there is no need to deploy a new certificate chain.

If osquery has been deployed with the full certificate chain (using --tls_server_certs), deploying a new certificate chain is necessary to allow for verification of the new certificate.

Deploying a certificate chain cannot be done centrally from Fleet.

How do I use a proxy server with Fleet?

Seeing your proxy's requests fail with an error like DEPTH_ZERO_SELF_SIGNED_CERT)? To get your proxy server's HTTP client to work with a local Fleet when using a self-signed cert, disable SSL / self-signed verification in the client.

The exact solution to this depends on the request client you are using. For example, when using Node.js ± Sails.js, you can work around this in the requests you're sending with await sails.helpers.http.get() by lifting your app with the NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED environment variable set to 0:

NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 sails console

I'm only getting partial results from live queries

Redis has an internal buffer limit for pubsub that Fleet uses to communicate query results. If this buffer is filled, extra data is dropped. To fix this, we recommend disabling the buffer size limit. Most installs of Redis should have plenty of spare memory to not run into issues. More info about this limit can be found here and here (search for client-output-buffer-limit).

We recommend a config like the following:

client-output-buffer-limit pubsub 0 0 60

How do I migrate hosts from one Fleet server to another (eg. testing to production)?

Primarily, this would be done by changing the --tls_hostname and enroll secret to the values for the new server. In some circumstances (see What do I need to do to change the Fleet server TLS certificate?) it may be necessary to deploy a new certificate chain configured with --tls_server_certs.

These configurations cannot be managed centrally from Fleet.

What do I do about "too many open files" errors?

This error usually indicates that the Fleet server has run out of file descriptors. Fix this by increasing the ulimit on the Fleet process. See the LimitNOFILE setting in the example systemd unit file for an example of how to do this with systemd.

Some deployments may benefit by setting the --server_keepalive flag to false.

This was also seen as a symptom of a different issue: if you're deploying on AWS on T type instances, there are different scenarios where the activity can increase and the instances will burst. If they run out of credits, then they'll stop processing leaving the file descriptors open.

Can I skip versions when updating Fleet to the latest version?

Absolutely! If you're updating from the current major release of Fleet (v4), you can install the latest version without upgrading to each minor version along the way. Just make sure to back up your database in case anything odd does pop up!

If you're updating from an older version (we'll use Fleet v3 as an example), it's best to take some stops along the way:

1. Back up your database.
2. Upgrade to the last release of of v3 - 3.13.0.
3. Migrate the database.
4. Test
5. Check the release post for v4.0.0 to see the breaking changes and get Fleet ready for v4.
6. Upgrade to v4.0.0.
7. Migrate the database.
8. Test
9. Upgrade to the current release.
10. One last migration.
11. Test again for good measure.

Taking it a bit slower on major releases gives you an opportunity to better track down where any issues may have been introduced.

I upgraded my database, but Fleet is still running slowly. What could be going on?

This could be caused by a mismatched connection limit between the Fleet server and the MySQL server that prevents Fleet from fully utilizing the database. First determine how many open connections your MySQL server supports. Now set the --mysql_max_open_conns and --mysql_max_idle_conns flags appropriately.

Why am I receiving a database connection error when attempting to "prepare" the database?

First, check if you have a version of MySQL installed that is at least 5.7. Then, make sure that you currently have a MySQL server running.

The next step is to make sure the credentials for the database match what is expected. Test your ability to connect to the database with mysql -u<username> -h<hostname_or_ip> -P<port> -D<database_name> -p.

If you're successful connecting to the database and still receive a database connection error, you may need to specify your database credentials when running fleet prepare db. It's encouraged to put your database credentials in environment variables or a config file.

fleet prepare db \
    --mysql_address=<database_address> \
    --mysql_database=<database_name> \
    --mysql_username=<username> \
    --mysql_password=<database_password>

Is Fleet available as a SaaS product?

Yes! Please sign up for the Fleet Cloud Beta.

What MySQL versions are supported?

Fleet is tested with MySQL 5.7.21 and 8.0.28. Newer versions of MySQL 5.7 and MySQL 8 typically work well. AWS Aurora requires at least version 2.10.0. Please avoid using MariaDB or other MySQL variants that are not officially supported. Compatibility issues have been identified with MySQL variants and these may not be addressed in future Fleet releases.

What are the MySQL user requirements?

The user fleet prepare db (via environment variable FLEET_MYSQL_USERNAME or command line flag --mysql_username=<username>) uses to interact with the database needs to be able to create, alter, and drop tables as well as the ability to create temporary tables.

Does Fleet support MySQL replication?

You can deploy MySQL or Maria any way you want. We recommend using managed/hosted mysql so you don't have to think about it, but you can think about it more if you want. Read replicas are supported. You can read more about MySQL configuration here.

What is duplicate enrollment and how do I fix it?

Duplicate host enrollment is when more than one host enrolls in Fleet using the same identifier (hardware UUID or osquery generated UUID).

Typically, this is caused by cloning a VM Image with an already enrolled osquery client, which results in duplicate osquery generated UUIDs. To resolve this issue, it is advised to configure --osquery_host_identifier=uuid (which will use the hardware UUID), and then delete the associated host in the Fleet UI.

In rare instances, VM Hypervisors have been seen to duplicate hardware UUIDs. When this happens, using --osquery_host_identifier=uuid will not resolve the duplicate enrollment problem. Sometimes the problem can be resolved by setting --osquery_host_identifier=instance (which will use the osquery generated UUID), and then delete the associated host in the Fleet UI.

Find more information about host identifiers here.

How do I resolve an "unknown column" error when upgrading Fleet?

The unknown column error typically occurs when the database migrations haven't been run during the upgrade process.

Check out the documentation on running database migrations to resolve this issue.

What API endpoints should I expose to the public internet?

If you would like to manage hosts that can travel outside your VPN or intranet we recommend only exposing the osquery endpoints to the public internet:

• /api/osquery
• /api/v1/osquery

If you are using Fleet Desktop and want it to work on remote devices, the bare minimum API to expose is /api/latest/fleet/device/*/desktop. This minimal endpoint will only provide the number of failing policies.

For full Fleet Desktop and scripts functionality, /api/fleet/orbit/* and/api/fleet/device/ping must also be exposed.

If you would like to use the fleetctl CLI from outside of your network, the following endpoints will also need to be exposed for fleetctl:

• /api/setup
• /api/v1/setup
• /api/latest/fleet/*
• /api/v1/fleet/*

If you would like to use Fleet's MDM features, the following endpoints need to be exposed:

• /mdm/apple/scep to allow hosts to obtain a SCEP certificate.
• /mdm/apple/mdm to allow hosts to reach the server using the MDM protocol.
• /api/mdm/apple/enroll to allow DEP enrolled devices to get an enrollment profile.
• /api/*/fleet/device/*/mdm/apple/manual_enrollment_profile to allow manually enrolled devices to download an enrollment profile.

The /mdm/apple/scep and /mdm/apple/mdm endpoints are outside of the /api path because they are not RESTful, and are not intended for use by API clients or browsers.

What is the minimum version of MySQL required by Fleet?

Fleet requires at least MySQL version 5.7.

How do I migrate from Fleet Free to Fleet Premium?

To migrate from Fleet Free to Fleet Premium, once you get a Fleet license, set it as a parameter to fleet serve either as an environment variable using FLEET_LICENSE_KEY or in the Fleet's config file. See here for more details. Note: You don't need to redeploy Fleet after the migration.

What Redis versions are supported?

Fleet is tested with Redis 5.0.14 and 6.2.7. Any version Redis after version 5 will typically work well.

Will my older version of Fleet work with Redis 6?

Most likely, yes! While we'd definitely recommend keeping Fleet up to date in order to take advantage of new features and bug patches, most legacy versions should work with Redis 6. Just keep in mind that we likely haven't tested your particular combination so that you may run into some unforeseen hiccups.

What happened to the "Schedule" page?

Scheduled queries are not gone! Instead, the concept of a scheduled query has been merged with a saved query. After 4.35, scheduling now happens on the queries page: a query can be scheduled (via familiar attributes such as "interval," "platform") or it can simply be saved to be run ad-hoc. A query can now belong to a team, or it can be a global query which every team inherits. This greatly simplifies the mental model of the product and enables us to build exciting features on top of the new unified query concept.

To achieve the above, 4.35 implemented an automatic migration which transitions any pre-existing scheduled query and 2017 pack into the new merged query concept:

• Any global scheduled query will have its query converted into a global query with the relevant schedule attributes (frequency, min. osquery version, logging, etc.).
• Any team-specific scheduled query will be converted into a query on that team with the relevant schedule characteristics.
• Any query that is referenced by a 2017 pack will be converted into a global query and the 2017 pack will reference it. The 2017 packs should continue functioning as before.

Important: To avoid naming conflicts, a query must have a unique name within its team. Therefore, the migration will add a timestamp after each migrated query. If you are using gitops for queries, we recommend that you run fleetctl get queries --yaml after the migration to get the latest set of yaml files. Otherwise, if you run fleetctl apply -f queries.yml, it will result in the creation of new queries rather than updating the existing ones. To prevent this issue, we recommend you use PATCH /api/v1/fleet/queries/{id} for updating or changing query names.

For any automated workflows that use the schedule endpoints on the API, we recommend consolidating to the query endpoints, which now accept the scheduled query attributes. The schedule endpoints in the API still function but are deprecated. To accommodate the new unified query concept, the schedule endpoints behave differently under-the-hood:

• The POST endpoints will create a new query with the specified attributes
• The PATCH endpoint will modify the specified query with the specified attributes
• The DELETE endpoint will delete the specified query.

Finally, "shard" has been retired as an option for queries. In its place we recommend using a canary team or a live query to test the impact of a query before deploying it more broadly.