Update or uninstall the collector

Updating the collector is one command. Uninstalling is two short steps — one command on the server, then one step in the dashboard — and skipping either leaves something behind. The server-side commands need a root shell.

Update

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://get.monitorable.net/install.sh | sudo sh

Re-running the install command with no arguments upgrades in place: it reads the API key and endpoint already saved in /etc/monitorable/agent.env, downloads the current binary, swaps it in, and restarts the service. Charts and history continue uninterrupted, and the re-run also re-probes the hardware — how the collector picks up drives or Docker installed since the first run.

If the updated collector doesn’t stay up, the command puts the previous one back — binary, configuration and service — restarts it, and exits with an error, so the server keeps reporting while you read the logs it printed. This only happens when the previous collector was running normally before the update. If an update is interrupted (for example, the SSH session drops), run the update command again.

In the dashboard, this is what Update available on the server’s own page, the yellow dot next to the agent version on the Servers list, or Server actions → Update agent… all run.

If the server is still on a pre-rename install (binary monitorable-otelcol, service monitorable-collector), re-running the current install command upgrades and migrates it in one step: it stops and removes the old monitorable-collector unit and binary once the new monitorable-agent binary and unit are in place, and keeps the on-disk queue — no history or in-flight batches are lost in the switch.

Uninstall

1. Run the uninstall command on the server:

   curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://get.monitorable.net/install.sh | sudo sh -s -- --uninstall

   🚀 Monitorable agent installer
   ================================
   🧹 Uninstalling the Monitorable agent...
   ✓ Stopped and removed the monitorable-agent service
   · monitorable-collector service: not present
   ✓ Deleted /opt/monitorable
   ✓ Deleted /etc/monitorable
   ✓ Deleted /var/lib/monitorable
   · /var/log/monitorable: not present
   ✓ Removed the NVMe SMART udev rule
   ✓ Deleted the monitorable user
   
   ✅ Uninstalled. Now open the dashboard and click Remove for this server.

2. Remove the server in the dashboard. On the Servers page, open the row’s Server actions menu and click Remove. The Uninstall the agent from web-01 screen shows the same command — run it as root on the server, and once it prints “Uninstalled” (or “Nothing to remove”), click Continue. (Server already gone, or the collector already uninstalled? Use the dialog’s skip link, The server no longer exists — skip this step.) Then confirm the Remove web-01? prompt with Remove.

Caution

Removing a server takes it out of your account immediately, with no undo, and revokes its API key on the spot. Its metric history is no longer reachable from the dashboard and ages out with the normal retention windows rather than being purged on the spot — as the prompt says, “Its metrics history stays until retention expires”. Re-adding a server with the same name gives you a fresh key and empty charts — history does not carry over.

Manual removal (if the script can't be downloaded)

If you can’t reach get.monitorable.net from the server, remove the collector by hand — five commands.

1. Stop the service and remove it from boot:

   systemctl disable --now monitorable-agent

   Removed "/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/monitorable-agent.service".

2. Delete the service unit and reload systemd:

   rm /etc/systemd/system/monitorable-agent.service
   systemctl daemon-reload

   From here, systemctl status monitorable-agent answers Unit monitorable-agent.service could not be found.

3. Delete the collector’s four directories — binary, configuration (this also removes /etc/monitorable/agent.env, which holds the server’s API key), state, and logs:

   rm -rf /opt/monitorable /etc/monitorable /var/lib/monitorable /var/log/monitorable

4. If the install detected an NVMe drive, it added one udev rule; remove it and reload. On servers without NVMe the file doesn’t exist and the -f makes that a no-op:

   rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/99-monitorable-nvme-smart.rules
   udevadm control --reload-rules

5. Delete the monitorable system user — this also removes its group:

   userdel monitorable

Nothing else to hunt down: the collector never writes outside the paths above.

If you skip one half

The two halves are independent, so each can be forgotten — with a different symptom each way:

• Collector removed, server row left in the dashboard: the row turns Offline and stays there. If an alert template is assigned, the Collector offline rule fires — for a server you meant to decommission. Remove the row.
• Server row removed, collector left running: revoking the API key turns every batch the orphaned collector sends into a rejected one; its log fills with Exporting failed. Dropping data. and HTTP Status Code 401. The collector keeps burning CPU and bandwidth on this until you uninstall it.