Install Plugins Manually

You can manually update plugins on an offline Tenable Nessus system in two ways: the user interface or the command line interface.

Before you begin:

To install plugins manually using the Tenable Nessus user interface:

Note: You cannot use this procedure to update Tenable Vulnerability Management or Tenable Security Center-managed scanners. For more information about how linked scanners receive plugin updates, see Tenable Nessus Plugin and Software Updates.

  1. On the offline system running Nessus (A), in the top navigation bar, click Settings.

    The About page appears.

  2. Click the Software Update tab.

  3. In the upper-right corner, click the Manual Software Update button.

    The Manual Software Update dialog box appears.

  4. In the Manual Software Update dialog box, select Upload your own plugin archive, and then select Continue.

  5. Navigate to the compressed TAR file you downloaded, select it, then click Open.

    Nessus updates with the uploaded plugins.

To install plugins manually using the command line interface:

  1. On the offline system running Nessus (A), open a command prompt.
  2. Use the nessuscli update <tar.gz filename> command specific to your operating system.

    Platform

    Command

    Windows

    C:\Program Files\Tenable\Nessus>nessuscli.exe update <tar.gz filename>

    macOS

    # /Library/Nessus/run/sbin/nessuscli update <tar.gz filename>

    Linux

    # /opt/nessus/sbin/nessuscli update <tar.gz filename>

    FreeBSD

    # /usr/local/nessus/sbin/nessuscli update <tar.gz filename>