Customize Your Installation

1 Installation Method

2 Official Agents

Select the agents you want to include. All agents are optional and can be added later.

3 Installation

# Install Zentinel proxy
curl -fsSL https://get.zentinelproxy.io | sh

# Select agents above to include them in the installation

On Linux with systemd, the installer also drops a unit at /etc/systemd/system/zentinel.service, a sysusers snippet, and a starter config at /etc/zentinel/zentinel.kdl. Pass -s -- --enable-service to enable and start the service in one step. See the installation docs for details.

4 Example Configuration

A starter configuration with your selected agents. Save as zentinel.kdl

// Zentinel Configuration
// https://zentinelproxy.io

system {
    worker-threads 0  // 0 = number of CPU cores
    graceful-shutdown-timeout-secs 30
}

listeners {
    listener "http" {
        address "0.0.0.0:8080"
        protocol "http"
    }
}

routes {
    route "default" {
        matches {
            path-prefix "/"
        }
        upstream "backend"
    }
}

upstreams {
    upstream "backend" {
        targets {
            target {
                address "127.0.0.1:3000"
            }
        }
        load-balancing "round_robin"
    }
}

// No agents configured

5 Run Zentinel

Start Zentinel with your configuration file.

# Start Zentinel
zentinel --config zentinel.kdl

Start agents before running Zentinel. Each agent runs as a separate process and communicates via Unix socket. Install agents with zentinel bundle install or cargo install <agent-crate>.

6 Verify It Works

Send a request to confirm the proxy is running and forwarding traffic.

# Test the proxy is forwarding requests
curl -i http://localhost:8080/

Make sure your backend (127.0.0.1:3000) is running before testing. If you see a 502, the proxy is working but can't reach the upstream.