Run OBI as a standalone process

OBI can run as a standalone Linux OS process with elevated privileges that can inspect other running processes.

Download and install

You can download the OBI executable from the OBI releases page.

Set up OBI

1. Create a configuration file following the configuration options documentation.

2. Run OBI as a privileged process:

sudo ./obi --config=<path to config file> 

Example configuration

Here’s an example configuration file (obi-config.yml):

# Basic configuration discovery:  services:  - name: my-service  open_ports: [8080, 8090]  exe_path: /usr/local/bin/my-service  # Traces configuration traces:  # Enable tracing  enabled: true   # OpenTelemetry endpoint  otlp_endpoint: http://localhost:4318   # Trace format  format: otlp  # Metrics configuration metrics:  # Enable metrics  enabled: true   # OpenTelemetry endpoint  otlp_endpoint: http://localhost:4318   # Metrics format  format: otlp  # Logging configuration log_level: info 

Run OBI

Run OBI with the configuration file:

sudo ./obi --config=obi-config.yml 

Configuration options

For a complete list of configuration options, see the configuration documentation.

Permissions

OBI requires elevated privileges to function properly. For more information about the specific capabilities required, see the security documentation.

Example: Docker instrumentation

To instrument a Docker container, you can run OBI on the host:

sudo ./obi --config=obi-config.yml 

With a configuration that targets the container:

discovery:  services:  - name: my-container-service  open_ports: [8080]  exe_path: /proc/*/root/app/my-app 

Example: System-wide instrumentation

To instrument all services on a system:

discovery:  services:  - name: all-services  open_ports: [80, 443, 8080, 8443]  log_level: info 

This configuration will instrument all processes listening on the specified ports.