capable.bt.bt(8)

capable.bt.bt8

Trace security capability checks (cap_capable()).

Usage

capable.bt

Overview

This traces security capability checks in the kernel, and prints details for each call. This can be useful for general debugging, and also security enforcement: determining a white list of capabilities an application needs.

Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool.

Requirements

CONFIG_BPF, bpftrace.

Examples

Trace all capability checks system-wide:

# capable.bt

Fields

TIME(s)

Time of capability check: HH:MM:SS.

UID

User ID.

PID

Process ID.

COMM

Process name. CAP Capability number. NAME Capability name. See capabilities(7) for descriptions.

AUDIT

Whether this was an audit event.

Overhead

This adds low-overhead instrumentation to capability checks, which are expected to be low frequency, however, that depends on the application. Test in a lab environment before use.

Source

This is from bpftrace.

https://github.com/iovisor/bpftrace

Also look in the bpftrace distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.

This is a bpftrace version of the bcc tool of the same name. The bcc tool provides options to customize the output.

https://github.com/iovisor/bcc

OS

Linux

Stability

Unstable - in development.

Author

Brendan Gregg

From bpftrace 0.17.0-1 in Debian 12 (Bookworm). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.