runZero on UniFi UDM Pro

Ever since I swapped my router from a OPNSense to my UniFi UDM Pro I missed having runZero installed on it. However...I recently SSH'ed into my UDM (as I hadn't really explored it before) and found out it was just a plain Debian system... 🤯

So, I figured someone must have figured out how to run a systemd service on it...and I was right: https://jmcglock.substack.com/p/running-blocky-on-the-unifi-dream (wbm)

So, this is a short post showing my adaptation of their blog post but for runZero:

# make a directory for it
mkdir -p /data/runzero && cd $_
# download (swap out your values where the <redacted> is at
curl -f https://console.runzero.com/download/explorer/<redacted>/<redacted>/runzero-explorer-linux-arm64.bin -o runzero-explorer.bin && chmod u+x $_

# creating the systemd service
cat > /etc/systemd/system/runzero.service << 'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Runzero Explorer
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
ConditionFileIsExecutable=/data/runzero/runzero-explorer.bin

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/data/runzero/
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 5
ExecStart=/data/runzero/runzero-explorer.bin manual
Restart=always
RestartSec=120
StartLimitInterval=5
StartLimitBurst=10
User=root

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

# reload and enable + start the service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now runzero

That's it... if you want more details on runZero see my previous blog post where I go over more information around runZero: https://www.secureideas.com/blog/uncharted-waters-using-runzero-opnsense-deep-diving-in-your-network (wbm)

Here's an example of running the runZero binary on the UDM system (with all potentially sensitive info redacted):

They also, as of UniFi OS Version 5.1.19 in July 2026, have htop installed to monitor system load:

And this is htop showing it running a scan after I initiated the task 😁

FYI, this is brand new for me but I'll update this post if something goes awry from an update or something.