The InfraScout Agent Now Runs on FreeBSD ​

September 29, 2026 · InfraScout Team

Firewalls, storage boxes, jump hosts and the odd long-lived service host often run FreeBSD, and until now they sat outside every assessment. The InfraScout agent now runs on FreeBSD (amd64). You enroll a FreeBSD host from the same portal dialog as everything else. The AI can run shell commands on it and query its inventory, and it shows up in agent lists, filters and groups next to your Windows, Linux and macOS hosts.

Enroll it like any other host ​

The portal's download and enrollment dialog has a FreeBSD tab. The command it gives you is written for FreeBSD rather than adapted from Linux. You run it from a root shell, so there is no sudo. It downloads the binary with fetch(1), passes the enrollment key through env INFRASCOUT_ENROLL_KEY=…, and fixes the architecture to amd64, so there is no architecture toggle to get wrong. If you enroll with a pre-created agent token instead, the Create Agent dialog under Admin › Agents offers FreeBSD too.

The agent installs as an rc.d service supervised by the system, so it restarts on its own if the process dies. It also comes back after a reboot without you adding anything to rc.conf. Its state lives in /var/db/infrascout-agent, where FreeBSD's filesystem layout expects it. The FreeBSD binary ships in every agent release from now on, with its own hash to verify like every other platform.

Commands and inventory ​

Shell commands run under /bin/sh as root. A command that runs past its timeout is stopped along with everything it started, so a hung pipeline doesn't leave orphaned processes behind on the host.

Inventory is complete from the first snapshot:

  • System facts: hardware and kernel details from sysctl, plus vendor, model and serial number from the SMBIOS data in kenv.
  • Software: every package pkg knows about. On FreeBSD 15 hosts that use packaged base, this includes the base system itself, so you can ask about base components the same way you ask about ports.
  • Services: the rc.d services, with the enabled set taken from the host's own configuration. Scripts that have no enable switch run at every boot, so they also count as automatic.
  • Certificates: the system trust store.

The agent reports boot time from kern.boottime, so a question like "which hosts haven't rebooted since the last patch window?" covers your FreeBSD hosts too.

The AI knows what it's talking to ​

The AI's tools now name FreeBSD explicitly. When it lists or counts agents it can filter on the freebsd OS family, so "check every FreeBSD host for an outdated OpenSSH package" narrows to the right set without guessing from hostnames. It also knows FreeBSD isn't a systemd host. The tool that starts long-running background processes isn't available on FreeBSD agents, so the AI uses ordinary shell commands there instead.

Find your FreeBSD hosts in the portal ​

Every tenant now has a system-owned dynamic group, FreeBSD Hosts, which collects FreeBSD agents automatically as they enroll. You don't need to create it. If your tenant already has a group with that name, yours stays as it is and no duplicate is added.

The Agents page and Admin › Agents both have a new OS filter: All, Windows, Linux, macOS and FreeBSD, each with its brand icon. It combines with the status filter, and with search on the admin page. When nothing matches, the empty state says which OS you filtered on, for example "No FreeBSD agents with status 'Stale'", so an empty list doesn't look like a broken one.

What this first release doesn't cover ​

FreeBSD support starts deliberately narrow. Only amd64 is supported for now, with no arm64 build, and other BSDs aren't supported. The least-privilege mode that lets the agent run without root is still Linux-only, so FreeBSD agents run as root. The fleet rollout script is also Linux-only and now refuses non-Linux hosts, so for FreeBSD use the enrollment command from the portal.

Install steps and prerequisites are in Deploy on FreeBSD. For grouping and filtering, see Agent Groups and Agents.

Questions or feedback? Reach us at info@infrascout.cloud.