Downgrade Tenable Nessus Agent

Tenable Nessus Agents support the ability to downgrade Tenable Nessus to a previous version of Tenable Nessus.

The following examples describe two scenarios: one scenario where you manually downgrade the agent software, and one scenario where the agent automatically downgrades because of your agent update plan setting.

Example 1: Manually Downgrade Agent

Scenario:

You are currently running an Early Access release, 10.0.0, and now want to downgrade to the previous version, 8.3.0.

Solution:

  1. Turn off automatic software updates by doing any of the following:
    • On Tenable Nessus Manager, disable the advanced setting Automatically Download Agent Updates, or agent_updates_from_feed.
    • On Tenable Vulnerability Management, enable the agent setting Exclude all agents from software updates.
    • On the agent, enable the advanced setting disable_core_updates.
  2. Uninstall the agent.
  3. Manually download and install the package of the previous version; in this example, Tenable Nessus Agent 8.3.0.

Example 2: Agent Automatically Downgrades to Align with your Update Plan

Scenario:

Your agent update plan determines what version Tenable Nessus Agent updates to, if you have automatic updates enabled. In this scenario, your update plan is set to ga, meaning the agent automatically updates to the latest generally available (GA) release. You are currently on a GA version of Tenable Nessus Agent; for example, 10.0.0.

However, you change your update plan setting to stable, meaning the agent delays updates and stays on an older release.

Result:

According to your new agent update plan setting, your agent version should be an older release than the latest GA version (which you are currently on). Therefore, to align your agent version with this setting, the next time agent checks for an update, the agent automatically updates to be on an older version. Tenable Nessus Agent automatically downgrades to 8.3.0, one release before the latest GA version.