Running the New Relic Infrastructure Agent as a Non-Root User

New Relic has introduced the ability for its Infrastructure agent to run as a non-root user, addressing customers' security concerns that restricted them from using the agent with root access. This led to the creation of the nri-agent user, which can operate in two modes: privileged and unprivileged. In privileged mode, the agent can access most metrics with elevated privileges, but does not enable Docker process metrics by default. In unprivileged mode, some metrics like file descriptor counts are not available, and certain inventory sources are not reported. Both modes require adjustments to custom integrations that originally depended on root access. The installation process involves setting the NRIA_MODE environment variable to choose between these modes, offering users flexible monitoring options that align with their security requirements.