How To Install bpftrace on Kali Linux

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install bpftrace on Kali Linux.

What is bpftrace

bpftrace is:

BPFtrace is a high-level tracing language for Linux enhanced Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) available in recent Linux kernels (4.x). BPFtrace uses LLVM as a backend to compile scripts to BPF-bytecode and makes use of BCC for interacting with the Linux BPF system, as well as existing Linux tracing capabilities: kernel dynamic tracing (kprobes), user-level dynamic tracing (uprobes), and tracepoints. The BPFtrace language is inspired by awk and C, and predecessor tracers such as DTrace and SystemTap.

There are three methods to install bpftrace on Kali Linux. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install bpftrace Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install bpftrace using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install bpftrace

Install bpftrace Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install bpftrace using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install bpftrace

Install bpftrace Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude on Kali Linux first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Kali Linux. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install bpftrace using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install bpftrace

How To Uninstall bpftrace on Kali Linux

To uninstall only the bpftrace package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove bpftrace

Uninstall bpftrace And Its Dependencies

To uninstall bpftrace and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Kali Linux, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove bpftrace

Remove bpftrace Configurations and Data

To remove bpftrace configuration and data from Kali Linux we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge bpftrace

Remove bpftrace configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove bpftrace configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge bpftrace

Dependencies

bpftrace have the following dependencies:

• libbpf0

References

• bpftrace website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install bpftrace package on Kali Linux using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.