Agent Updates and Self-Repair
How the Plenix agent updates itself, what it does when an update goes wrong, and how to bring back a device whose agent has stopped.
The Plenix agent updates itself. You do not need to visit a device or push anything. This page explains what happens during an update and what protects a device when an update goes wrong.
How an update reaches a device
A new agent version does not go to every device at once.
- Three devices first. The first three agents to check in are offered the new version.
- A pause. Nothing else happens until at least one of them has come back running the new version and half an hour has passed.
- A quarter, half, then everyone. The update then reaches about 25% of devices, 50% an hour later and all of them an hour after that.
A full rollout therefore takes about three hours. Devices that are switched off update when they next come online.
When a release is bad
The rollout stops by itself when devices that were offered the update:
- roll back to their previous version,
- report that the new version crashed, or
- do not come back at all.
Every device that has not updated yet stays on the version it is running, and keeps working. We are alerted straight away and ship a corrected version.
What the agent does on the device
- Keeps the old version. Before updating, the agent keeps a copy of the version it is running.
- Checks itself. After updating, the new version has to start and reach Plenix. If it does not, the agent puts the old version back and carries on.
- Does not retry a bad release. A version that failed on a device is not installed on it again. The fix arrives as a new version.
- Restarts if it stops. On Windows the agent service restarts itself after a failure, and a scheduled check named PlenixAgentWatchdog starts it again if it is found stopped.
Stopping the agent on purpose. Because the agent restarts itself, stopping the service by hand only lasts about ten minutes. To remove a device from management, uninstall the agent.
Updating one device now
Open the device in RMM and choose Force Update Agent. This skips the staged wait for that one device. It does not override a rollout that has stopped itself.
Bringing back a device that stopped on agent 3.79.0
Agent 3.79.0, released on 8 October 2026, stopped on Windows devices straight after updating. It was withdrawn the same morning. macOS and Linux devices were not affected.
A device that stopped on 3.79.0 cannot update itself, because the agent stops before it checks for a new version. Reinstall it once:
- In Plenix, download the Windows agent installer for that client — the same installer you used when you first added the device.
- On the device, run the installer as an administrator.
- Within a minute or two the device shows as online again, on agent 3.79.1 or later, with its history intact.
From 3.79.1 onwards the agent rolls itself back and restarts itself, so this manual step should not be needed again.
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