Link an Agent to Tenable Nessus Manager

After you install Tenable Nessus Agent, link the agent to Tenable Nessus Manager.

Before you begin:

Retrieve the linking key from Tenable Nessus Manager.
Install Tenable Nessus Agent.

To link Tenable Nessus Agent to Tenable Nessus Manager:

Log in to the Tenable Nessus Agent from a command terminal.
At the agent command prompt, use the command nessuscli agent link using the supported arguments.

For example:

Linux:

/opt/nessus_agent/sbin/nessuscli agent link

--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00

--name=LinuxAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

macOS:

# /Library/NessusAgent/run/sbin/nessuscli agent link
--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00
--name=MyOSXAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

Windows:

# C:\Program Files\Tenable\Nessus Agent\nessuscli.exe agent link
--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00
--name=WindowsAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

The following table lists the supported arguments for nessuscli agent link:

Argument	Required	Value
--ca-path	no	A custom CA certificate to use to validate the manager's server certificate.
--groups	no	One or more existing agent groups where you want to add the agent. If you do not specify an agent group during the install process, you can add your linked agent to an agent group later in Tenable Nessus Manager. List multiple groups in a comma-separated list. If any group names have spaces, use quotes around the whole list. For example: --groups="Atlanta,Global Headquarters" Note: The agent group name is case-sensitive and must match exactly. You must encase the agent group name in quotation marks (for example, --groups="My Group").
--host	yes	The static IP address or hostname you set during the Tenable Nessus Manager installation.
--key	yes	The linking key that you retrieved from the manager.
--name	no	A name for your agent. If you do not specify a name for your agent, the name defaults to the name of the computer where you are installing the agent.
--offline-install	no	When enabled, the agent periodically attempts to link to Tenable Nessus Manager, even if the agent is not online. If the agent cannot connect to the controller, it retries every hour. If the agent can connect to the controller but the link fails, it retries every 24 hours. If you do not use this flag, the agent immediately attempts to link with Tenable Nessus Manager (the agent only attempts once).
--port	yes	8834 or your custom port.
--proxy-agent	no	The user agent name, if your proxy requires a preset user agent.
--proxy-host	no	The hostname or IP address of your proxy server.
--proxy-password	no	The password of the user account that you specified as the username.
--proxy-port	no	The port number of the proxy server.
--proxy-username	no	The name of a user account that has permissions to access and use the proxy server.