This document summarizes installation and use of BroControl, Bro’s interactive shell for operating Bro installations. BroControl has two modes of operation: a stand-alone mode for managing a traditional, single-system Bro setup; and a cluster mode for maintaining a multi-system setup of coordinated Bro instances load-balancing the work across a set of independent machines. Once installed, the operation is pretty similar for both types; just keep in mind that if this document refers to “nodes” and you’re in a stand-alone setup, there is only a single one and no worker/proxies.
Contents
You can find the latest BroControl release for download at http://www.bro.org/download.
BroControl’s git repository is located at git://git.bro.org/broctl. You can browse the repository here.
This document describes BroControl 1.3-beta. See the CHANGES file for version history.
Running BroControl requires the following prerequisites:
- A Unix system. FreeBSD, Linux, and Mac OS X are supported and should work out of the box. Other Unix systems will quite likely require some tweaking. Note that in a cluster setup, all systems must be running exactly the same operating system.
- A version of Python >= 2.6.
- A bash (note in particular, that on FreeBSD, bash is not installed by default).
- In a cluster setup, rsync must be installed on every host in the cluster. In addition, sshd must be installed and running on every host except the manager, and ssh must be installed on the manager.
If you’re using a load-balancing method such as PF_RING, then there is additional software to install (for details, see the Cluster Configuration documentation).
Additionally, in a cluster setup you must have the same user account set up on all hosts, and ssh access from the manager node to this user account must be setup on all machines, and must work without asking for a password/passphrase (for example, using ssh public key authentication). Finally, on the worker nodes, this user must have access to the target network interface in promiscuous mode.
Follow the directions to install Bro and BroControl according to the instructions in the Installing Bro documentation.
Note that if you are planning to run Bro in a cluster configuration, then you need to install Bro and BroControl only on the manager host (the BroControl install command will install Bro and all required scripts to the other hosts in your cluster).
For more details on how to configure BroControl in a cluster configuration, see the examples in the Cluster Configuration documentation.
BroControl is an interactive interface for managing a Bro installation which allows you to, e.g., start/stop the monitoring or update its configuration.
Before actually running BroControl, you first need to edit the broctl.cfg, node.cfg, and networks.cfg files. In the broctl.cfg file, you should review the BroControl options and make sure the options are set correctly for your environment (for a description of every BroControl option, see the Option Reference section below). Next, edit the node.cfg file and specify the nodes that you will be running. For a description of every option available for nodes, see the Node section below. Finally, edit the networks.cfg file and list each network (see the examples in the file for the format to use) that is considered local to the monitored environment.
BroControl is started with the broctl script and then expects commands on its command-line (alternatively, broctl can also be started with a single command directly on the shell’s command line, such as broctl help):
> broctl
Welcome to BroControl x.y
Type "help" for help.
[BroControl] >
As the message says, type help to see a list of all commands. We will now briefly summarize the most important commands. A full reference follows Command Reference.
If this is the first time you are running BroControl, then the first thing you must do is run the BroControl install command. The “install” command will make sure all of the files needed by BroControl and Bro are brought up-to-date based on the configuration specified in the broctl.cfg, node.cfg, and networks.cfg files, and for a cluster setup it will also copy all of the required scripts and executables to all the other hosts in your cluster.
After the “install” command has completed successfully, then the monitoring can be started with the start command. In a cluster setup, this will successively start manager, proxies, and workers. The status command should then show all nodes as “running”. If any nodes have a status of “crashed”, then use the diag command to see diagnostic information (you can specify the name of the crashed node as an argument to the diag command to show diagnostics for only that one node). To stop the monitoring, issue the stop command. After all nodes have stopped, the status command should show all nodes as “stopped”. exit leaves the shell.
Whenever the BroControl configuration is modified in any way (including changes to configuration files and site-specific policy scripts, or upgrading to a new version of Bro or BroControl), install must be used to install the new version. No changes will take effect until install is run. Before you run install, check can be used to check for any potential errors in the new configuration, e.g., typos in scripts. If check does not report any problems, doing install will pretty likely not break anything.
Note that generally configuration changes only take effect after a restart of the affected nodes. The restart command triggers this. Some changes however can be put into effect on-the-fly without restarting any of the nodes by using the update command (again only after doing install first). Such dynamic updates generally work with all changes done which only modify const variables declared as redefinable (i.e., with Bro’s &redef attribute).
BroControl provides various options to control the behavior of the setup. These options can be set by editing broctl.cfg (the option names are case-insensitive). The config command gives a list of all options with their current values. A list of the most important options also follows Option Reference.
On the manager system (and on the stand-alone system), you find the current set of (aggregated) logs in logs/current (which is a symlink to the corresponding spool directory). The proxies and workers log into spool/proxy/ and spool/<worker-name>/, respectively. The manager/stand-alone logs are archived in logs/, by default once a day. Log files of workers and proxies are discarded at the same rotation interval.
You’ll most likely want to adapt the Bro policy to the local environment and generally site-specific tuning requires writing local policy scripts.
During the initial install, sample local policy scripts (which you can edit) are installed in share/bro/site. In the stand-alone setup, a single file called local.bro gets loaded automatically. In the cluster setup, the same local.bro gets loaded, followed by one of three other files: local-manager.bro, local-worker.bro, and local-proxy.bro are loaded by the manager, workers, and proxy, respectively.
In the cluster setup, the main exception to putting everything into local.bro is notice filtering, which should be done only on the manager.
The next scripts that are loaded are the ones that are automatically generated by BroControl. These scripts are created from the networks.cfg and broctl.cfg files.
The last scripts loaded are any node-specific scripts specified with the option aux_scripts in node.cfg. This option can be used to load additional scripts to individual nodes only. For example, one could add a script experimental.bro to a single worker for trying out new experimental code.
The scripts command shows precisely which policy scripts get loaded (and in what order) by a node; that can be very helpful.
If you want to change which local policy scripts are loaded by the nodes, you can set SitePolicyStandalone for all Bro instances, SitePolicyManager for the manager, and SitePolicyWorker for the workers. To change the directory where local policy scripts are located, set the option SitePolicyPath to a different path. These options can be changed in the broctl.cfg file.
The following summary lists all commands supported by BroControl. All commands may be either entered interactively or specified on the shell’s command line. If not specified otherwise, commands taking [<nodes>] as arguments apply their action either to the given set of nodes, to the manager node if “manager” is given, to all proxy nodes if “proxies” is given, to all worker nodes if “workers” is given, or to all nodes if none are given.
Determines the current load on the network interfaces monitored by each of the given worker nodes. The load is measured over the specified interval (in seconds), or by default over 10 seconds. This command uses the capstats tool, which is installed along with broctl.
(Note: When using a CFlow and the CFlow command line utility is installed as well, the capstats command can also query the device for port statistics. TODO: document how to set this up.)
This command has two modes of operation. Without arguments (or just --no-watch), it performs a set of maintenance tasks, including the logging of various statistical information, expiring old log files, checking for dead hosts, and restarting nodes which terminated unexpectedly (the latter can be suppressed with the --no-watch option if no auto-restart is desired). This mode is intended to be executed regularly via cron, as described in the installation instructions. While not intended for interactive use, no harm will be caused by executing the command manually: all the maintenance tasks will then just be performed one more time.
The second mode is for interactive usage and determines if the regular tasks are indeed performed when broctl cron is executed. In other words, even with broctl cron in your crontab, you can still temporarily disable it by running cron disable, and then later reenable with cron enable. This can be helpful while working, e.g., on the BroControl configuration and cron would interfere with that. cron ? can be used to query the current state.
Runs Bro offline on a given trace file using the same configuration as when running live. It does, however, use the potentially not-yet-installed policy files in SitePolicyPath and disables log rotation. Additional Bro command line flags and scripts can be given (each argument after a -- argument is interpreted as a script).
Upon completion, the command prints a path where the log files can be found. Subsequent runs of this command may delete these logs.
In cluster mode, Bro is run with both manager and worker scripts loaded into a single instance. While that doesn’t fully reproduce the live setup, it is often sufficient for debugging analysis scripts.
Restarts the given nodes, or all nodes if none are specified. The effect is the same as first executing stop followed by a start, giving the same nodes in both cases. This command is most useful to activate any changes made to Bro policy scripts (after running install first). Note that a subset of policy changes can also be installed on the fly via update, without requiring a restart.
If --clean is given, the installation is reset into a clean state before restarting. More precisely, a restart --clean turns into the command sequence stop, cleanup, check, install, and start.
This section summarizes the options that can be set in broctl.cfg for customizing the behavior of BroControl (the option names are case-insensitive). Usually, one only needs to change the “user options”, which are listed first. The “internal options” are, as the name suggests, primarily used internally and set automatically. They are documented here only for reference.
BroControl provides a plugin interface to extend its functionality. A plugin is written in Python and can do any, or all, of the following:
- Perform actions before or after any of the standard BroControl commands is executed. When running before the actual command, it can filter which nodes to operate or stop the execution altogether. When running after the command, it gets access to the commands success status on a per-node basis (where applicable).
- Add custom commands to BroControl.
- Add custom options to BroControl defined in broctl.cfg.
- Add custom keys to nodes defined in node.cfg.
A plugin is written by deriving a new class from BroControl class Plugin. The Python script with the new plugin is then copied into a plugin directory searched by BroControl at startup. By default, BroControl searches <prefix>/lib/broctl/plugins; additional directories may be configured by setting the SitePluginPath option. Note that any plugin script must end in *.py to be found. BroControl comes with some example plugins that can be used as a starting point; see the <prefix>/lib/broctl/plugins directory.
In the following, we document the API that is available to plugins. A plugin must be derived from the Plugin class, and can use its methods as well as those of the Node class.
The class Plugin is the base class for all BroControl plugins.
The class has a number of methods for plugins to override, and every plugin must at least override name() and pluginVersion().
For each BroControl command foo, there are two methods, cmd_foo_pre and cmd_foo_post, that are called just before the command is executed and just after it has finished, respectively. The arguments these methods receive correspond to their command-line parameters, and are further documented below.
The cmd_<XXX>_pre methods have the ability to prevent the command’s execution, either completely or partially for those commands that take nodes as parameters. In the latter case, the method receives a list of nodes that the command is to be run on, and it can filter that list and returns modified version of nodes to actually use. The standard case would be returning simply the unmodified nodes parameter. To completely block the command’s execution, return an empty list. To just not execute the command for a subset, remove the affected ones. For commands that do not receive nodes as arguments, the return value is interpreted as boolean indicating whether command execution should proceed (True) or not (False).
The cmd_<XXX>_post methods likewise receive the commands arguments as their parameter, as documented below. For commands taking nodes, the list corresponds to those nodes for which the command was actually executed (i.e., after any cmd_<XXX>_pre filtering).
Note that if a plugin prevents a command from executing either completely or partially, it should report its reason via the message() or error() methods.
If multiple plugins hook into the same command, all their cmd_<XXX>_{pre,post} are executed in undefined order. The command is executed on the intersection of all cmd_<XXX>_pre results.
Finally, note that the restart command is just a combination of other commands and thus their callbacks are run in addition to the callbacks for restart.
debug (self, msg)
Logs a debug message in BroControl’s debug log if enabled.
error (self, msg)
Reports an error to the user and terminates broctl.
execute (self, node, cmd)
Executes a command on the host for the given node of type Node. Returns a tuple (success, output) in which success is True if the command ran successfully and output is the combined stdout/stderr output (or None if we couldn’t connect to the host).
executeParallel (self, cmds)
Executes a set of commands in parallel on multiple hosts. cmds is a list of tuples (node, cmd), in which the node is a Node instance and cmd is a string with the command to execute for it. The method returns a list of tuples (node, success, output), in which success is True if the command ran successfully and output is the combined stdout/stderr output (or None if we couldn’t connect to the host) for the corresponding node.
getGlobalOption (self, name)
Returns the value of the global BroControl option or state attribute name. If the user has not set the options, its default value is returned. See the output of broctl config for a complete list.
getOption (self, name)
Returns the value of one of the plugin’s options, name. The returned value will always be a string.
An option has a default value (see options()), which can be overridden by a user in broctl.cfg. An option’s value cannot be changed by the plugin.
getState (self, name)
Returns the current value of one of the plugin’s state variables, name. The returned value will always be a string. If it has not yet been set, an empty string will be returned.
Different from options, state variables can be set by the plugin. They are persistent across restarts.
Note that a plugin cannot query any global BroControl state variables.
hosts (self, nodes)
Returns a list of Node objects which is a subset of the list in nodes, such that only one node per host will be chosen. If nodes is empty, then the returned list will be a subset of the entire list of configured nodes.
message (self, msg)
Reports a message to the user.
nodes (self)
Returns a list of all configured Node objects.
parseNodes (self, names)
Returns a list of Node objects for a string of space-separated node names. If a name does not correspond to a known node, an error message is printed and the node is skipped from the returned list. If no names are known, an empty list is returned.
setState (self, name, value)
Sets one of the plugin’s state variables, name, to value. value must be a string. The change is permanent and will be recorded to disk.
Note that a plugin cannot change any global BroControl state variables.
broProcessDied (self, node)
Called when BroControl finds the Bro process for Node node to have terminated unexpectedly. This method will be called just before BroControl prepares the node’s “crash report” and before it cleans up the node’s spool directory.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_attachgdb_post (self, nodes)
Called just after the attachgdb command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_attachgdb_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the attachgdb command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_capstats_post (self, nodes, interval)
Called just after the capstats command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_capstats_pre (self, nodes, interval)
Called just before the capstats command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command. interval is an integer with the measurement interval in seconds.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_check_post (self, results)
Called just after the check command has finished. It receives the list of 2-tuples (node, bool) indicating the nodes the command was executed for, along with their success status.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_check_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the check command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_cleanup_post (self, nodes, all)
Called just after the cleanup command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_cleanup_pre (self, nodes, all)
Called just before the cleanup command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command. all is boolean indicating whether the --all argument has been given.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_config_post (self)
Called just after the config command has finished.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_config_pre (self)
Called just before the config command is run. Returns a boolean indicating whether or not the command should run.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_cron_post (self, arg, watch)
Called just after the cron command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_cron_pre (self, arg, watch)
Called just before the cron command is run. arg is an empty string if the command is executed without arguments. Otherwise, it is one of the strings: enable, disable, ?. watch is a boolean indicating whether the cron command should restart abnormally terminated Bro processes; it’s only valid if arg is empty.
Returns a boolean indicating whether or not the cron command should run.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_custom (self, cmd, args)
Called when a command defined by the commands method is executed. cmd is the command (without the plugin’s prefix), and args is a single string with all arguments.
If the arguments are actually node names, parseNodes can be used to get the Node objects.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_df_post (self, nodes)
Called just after the df command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_df_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the df command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_diag_post (self, nodes)
Called just after the diag command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_diag_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the diag command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_exec_post (self, cmdline)
Called just after the exec command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_exec_pre (self, cmdline)
Called just before the exec command is run. cmdline is a string with the command line to execute.
Returns a boolean indicating whether or not the exec command should run.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_install_post (self)
Called just after the install command has finished.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_install_pre (self)
Called just before the install command is run. Returns a boolean indicating whether or not the command should run.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_netstats_post (self, nodes)
Called just after the netstats command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_netstats_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the netstats command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_nodes_post (self)
Called just after the nodes command has finished.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_nodes_pre (self)
Called just before the nodes command is run. Returns a boolean indicating whether or not the command should run.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_peerstatus_post (self, nodes)
Called just after the peerstatus command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_peerstatus_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the peerstatus command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_print_post (self, nodes, id)
Called just after the print command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_print_pre (self, nodes, id)
Called just before the print command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command. id is a string with the name of the ID to be printed.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_process_post (self, trace, options, scripts, success)
Called just after the process command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method, plus an additional boolean success indicating whether Bro terminated normally.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_process_pre (self, trace, options, scripts)
Called just before the process command is run. It receives the trace to read from as a string, a list of additional Bro options, and a list of additional Bro scripts.
Returns a boolean indicating whether or not the process command should run.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_restart_post (self, nodes)
Called just after the restart command has finished. It receives a list of nodes indicating the nodes on which the command was executed.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_restart_pre (self, nodes, clean)
Called just before the restart command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command. clean is boolean indicating whether the --clean argument has been given.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_scripts_post (self, nodes, check)
Called just after the scripts command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_scripts_pre (self, nodes, check)
Called just before the scripts command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command. check is boolean indicating whether the -c option was given.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_start_post (self, results)
Called just after the start command has finished. It receives the list of 2-tuples (node, bool) indicating the nodes the command was executed for, along with their success status.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_start_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the start command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_status_post (self, nodes)
Called just after the status command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_status_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the status command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_stop_post (self, results)
Called just after the stop command has finished. It receives the list of 2-tuples (node, bool) indicating the nodes the command was executed for, along with their success status.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_stop_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the stop command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_top_post (self, nodes)
Called just after the top command has finished. Arguments are as with the pre method. Note that when top is run interactively to auto-refresh continuously, this method will be called once after each update.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_top_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the top command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command. Note that when top is run interactively to auto-refresh continuously, this method will be called once before each update.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_update_post (self, results)
Called just after the update command has finished. It receives the list of 2-tuples (node, bool) indicating the nodes the command was executed for, along with their success status.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
cmd_update_pre (self, nodes)
Called just before the update command is run. It receives the list of nodes, and returns the list of nodes that should proceed with the command.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
commands (self)
Returns a set of custom commands provided by the plugin.
The return value is a list of 3-tuples each having the following elements:
- command
- A string with the command’s name. Note that the command name exposed to the user will be prefixed with the plugin’s prefix as returned by prefix() (e.g., myplugin.mycommand).
- arguments
- A string describing the command’s arguments in a textual form suitable for use in the help command summary (e.g., [<nodes>] for a command taking an optional list of nodes). Empty if no arguments are expected.
- description
- A string with a description of the command’s semantics suitable for use in the help command summary.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The implementation must not call the parent class’ implementation. The default implementation returns an empty list.
done (self)
Called once just before BroControl terminates. This method can do any cleanup the plugin may require.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
hostStatusChanged (self, host, status)
Called when BroControl’s cron command finds the availability of a cluster system to have changed. Initially, all systems are assumed to be up and running. Once BroControl notices that a system isn’t responding (defined as not accepting SSH sessions), it calls this method, passing in a string with the name of the host and a boolean status set to False. Once the host becomes available again, the method will be called again for the same host with status now set to True.
Note that BroControl’s cron tracks a host’s availability across execution, so if the next time it’s run the host is still down, this method will not be called again.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation does nothing.
init (self)
Called once just before BroControl starts executing any commands. This method can do any initialization that the plugin may require.
Note that when this method executes, BroControl guarantees that all internals are fully set up (e.g., user-defined options are available). This may not be the case when the class __init__ method runs.
Returns a boolean, indicating whether the plugin should be used. If it returns False, the plugin will be removed and no other methods called.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The default implementation always returns True.
name (self)
Returns a string with a descriptive name for the plugin (e.g., "TestPlugin"). The name must not contain any whitespace.
This method must be overridden by derived classes. The implementation must not call the parent class’ implementation.
nodeKeys (self)
Returns a list of names of custom keys (the value of a key can be specified in node.cfg for any node defined there). The value for a key will be available from the Node object as attribute <prefix>_<key> (e.g., node.myplugin_mykey). If not set, the attribute will be set to an empty string.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The implementation must not call the parent class’ implementation. The default implementation returns an empty list.
options (self)
Returns a set of local configuration options provided by the plugin.
The return value is a list of 4-tuples each having the following elements:
- name
- A string with name of the option (e.g., Path). Option names are case-insensitive. Note that the option name exposed to the user will be prefixed with your plugin’s prefix as returned by prefix() (e.g., myplugin.Path).
- type
- A string with type of the option, which must be one of "bool", "string", or "int".
- default
- A string with the option’s default value. Note that this must always be a string, even for non-string types. For booleans, use "0" for False and "1" for True. For integers, give the value as a string "42".
- description
- A string with a description of the option semantics.
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The implementation must not call the parent class’ implementation. The default implementation returns an empty list.
pluginVersion (self)
Returns an integer with a version number for the plugin. Plugins should increase their version number with any significant change.
This method must be overridden by derived classes. The implementation must not call the parent class’ implementation.
prefix (self)
Returns a string with a prefix for the plugin’s options and commands names (e.g., “myplugin”).
This method can be overridden by derived classes. The implementation must not call the parent class’ implementation. The default implementation returns a lower-cased version of name().
Class representing one node of the BroControl maintained setup. In standalone mode, there’s always exactly one node of type standalone. In a cluster setup, there is exactly one of type manager, one or more of type proxy, and zero or more of type worker.
A Node object has a number of keys with values that are set via the node.cfg file and can be accessed directly (from a plugin) via corresponding Python attributes (e.g., node.name):
- name (string)
- The name of the node, which corresponds to the [<name>] section in node.cfg.
- type (string)
- The type of the node, which will be one of standalone, manager, proxy, and worker.
- env_vars (string)
- A comma-separated list of environment variables to set when running Bro (e.g., env_vars=VAR1=1,VAR2=2). These node-specific values override global values (specified in the broctl.cfg file).
- host (string)
- The hostname of the system the node is running on.
- interface (string)
- The network interface for Bro to use; empty if not set.
- lb_procs (integer)
- The number of clustered Bro workers you’d like to start up.
- lb_method (string)
- The load balancing method to distribute packets to all of the processes (must be one of: pf_ring, myricom, or interfaces).
- lb_interfaces (string)
- If the load balancing method is interfaces, then this is a comma-separated list of network interface names to use.
- pin_cpus (string)
- A comma-separated list of CPU numbers to which the node’s Bro processes will be pinned (if not specified, then CPU pinning will not be used for this node). This option is only supported on Linux and FreeBSD (it is ignored on all other platforms). CPU numbering starts at zero (e.g., the only valid CPU numbers for a machine with one dual-core processor would be 0 and 1). If the length of this list does not match the number of Bro processes for this node, then some CPUs could have zero (if too many CPU numbers are specified) or more than one (if not enough CPU numbers are specified) Bro processes pinned to them. Only the specified CPU numbers will be used, regardless of whether additional CPU cores exist.
- aux_scripts (string)
- Any node-specific Bro script configured for this node.
- zone_id (string)
- If BroControl is managing a cluster comprised of nodes using non-global IPv6 addresses, then this configures the RFC 4007 zone_id string that the node associates with the common zone that all cluster nodes are a part of. This identifier may differ between nodes.
Any attribute that is not defined in node.cfg will be empty.
In addition, plugins can override Plugin.nodeKeys to define their own node keys, which can then be likewise set in node.cfg. The key names will be prepended with the plugin’s Plugin.prefix (e.g., for the plugin test, the node key foo is set by adding test.foo=value to node.cfg).
Finally, a Node object has the following methods that can be called from a plugin:
cwd (self)
Returns a string with the node’s working directory.
describe (self)
Returns an extended string representation of the node including all its keys with values (sorted by key).
getPID (self)
Returns the process ID of the node’s Bro process if running, and None otherwise.
getPort (self)
Returns an integer with the port that this node’s communication system is listening on for incoming connections, or -1 if no such port has been set yet.
hasCrashed (self)
Returns True if the node’s Bro process has exited abnormally.
BroControl sends three types of mails to the address given in MailTo:
TODO: broctl cron logs a number of statistics, which can be analyzed/plotted for understanding the clusters run-time behavior.