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Creating a local building environment

These instructions are meant to describe how to create a local building and execution environment. If you would like to build tracee container(s) image(s), read this instead.

Note

A building environment will let you build and execute tracee inside a docker container, containing all needed tools to build and execute it. If you're using an OSX environment, for example, you can install gmake (brew install gmake) and configure such environment by using Docker.

Attention

If you want to build tracee on your local machine read this.

Quick steps (impatient readers)

Example

  • Build and execute tracee:

    make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-prepare
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-shell

    and inside the container:

    make clean
make tracee
sudo ./dist/tracee \
    -o option:parse-arguments \
    --filter comm=bash \
    --filter follow

Now, in your host's bash shell, execute a command. You will see all events (except scheduler ones) being printed, in "table format", to stdout.

  • Build and execute tracee:

    make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-prepare
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-shell

    and inside the container:

    make clean
make all
sudo ./dist/tracee \
    -o format:json \
    -o option:parse-arguments \
    --filter comm=bash \
    --filter follow

Now, in your host's bash shell, execute: sudo strace /bin/ls and observe tracee warning you about a possible risk (with its Anti-Debugging signature).

Now, for more patient readers ...

How to build and use the environment

In order to have a controlled building environment for tracee, tracee provides a Makefile.tracee-make file that allows you to create and use a docker container environment to build & test tracee.

Two different environments are maintained for building tracee:

  • Alpine
  • Ubuntu

The reason for that is that Alpine Linux is based in the musl C standard library, while the Ubuntu Linux uses glibc. By supporting both building environments we can always be sure that the project builds (and executes) correctly in both environments.

Attention

Locally created containers, called alpine-tracee-make or ubuntu-tracee-make, share the host source code directory. This means that, if you build tracee binary using alpine distribution, the binary might not be compatible to the Linux distribution from your host OS.

Creating a builder environment

  • To create an alpine-tracee-make container:

    make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-prepare

  • To create an ubuntu-tracee-make container:

    make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make ubuntu-prepare

Executing a builder environment

  • To execute an alpine-tracee-make shell:

    make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-shell

  • To execute an ubuntu-tracee-make shell:

    make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make ubuntu-shell

Using build environment as a make replacement

Instead of executing a builder shell, you may use alpine-tracee-make, or ubuntu-tracee-make, as a replacement for the make command:

make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make ubuntu-prepare
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make ubuntu-make ARG="help"
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make ubuntu-make ARG="clean"
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make ubuntu-make ARG="bpf"
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make ubuntu-make ARG="tracee"
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make ubuntu-make ARG="all"

And, after the compilation, run the commands directly in your host:

sudo ./dist/tracee \
    -o option:parse-arguments \
    --filter comm=bash \
    --filter follow

Note: the generated binary must be compatible to your host (depending on glibc version, for example).

If you don't want to depend on host's libraries versions, or if you are using the alpine-tracee-make container as a replacement for make, and your host is not an Alpine Linux, then you may set STATIC=1 variable so you can run compiled binaries in your host:

make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-prepare
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-make ARG="help"
STATIC=1 make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-make alpine-make ARG="all"

and execute the static binary from your host:

ldd dist/tracee

not a dynamic executable

Attention

compiling tracee-rules with STATIC=1 won't allow you to use golang based signatures:

2021/12/13 13:27:21 error opening plugin /tracee/dist/signatures/builtin.so:
plugin.Open("/tracee/dist/signatures/builtin.so"): Dynamic loading not supported