Agent and Sensor Overview
    • 03 Jul 2024
    • 2 Minutes to read
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    Agent and Sensor Overview

    • PDF

    Article summary

    Agent installation and deployment

    The running piece of software that collects our Linux EDR telemetry on endpoints is known as an agent, or sensor.

    1. From the navigation menu, click Endpoints, and then click Deploy Sensors.

    For a complete guide and system requirements, see Deploy an EDR sensor agent.

    Agent commands

    Run the following command from the installation directory.

    cfsvcd -h

    Expected output and command options.

    Red Canary, Inc.
    
    USAGE:
     cfsvcd [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]
    
    FLAGS:
     -h, --help Prints help information
     -V, --version Prints version information
     -v, --verbose Enable verbose logging
    
    OPTIONS:
     -o, --offload-target  Set the offload target [default: AWS] [possible values: AWS, Disk]

    Agent debugging

    Note: The command you use may need to be adjusted depending on the distribution on which Red Canary Linux EDR is installed. 

    • Systemd distributions use systemctl for services management.

    • Other distributions may use init and the service command.

    • Upstart uses initctl.

    • While service commands function in systemd distributions, init distributions cannot interpret systemctl commands.

    When following these steps, please first verify which command is applicable to your distribution.

    Confirm the agent is running

    Run:

    systemctl status cfsvcd 

    Expected output:

    “Active:” ... “active (running)” 

    Check that the log entries (the lines beginning with timestamps) don’t indicate any error conditions. If there are no error conditions, you should still see systemd entries indicating that the service started, and cfsvcd entries indicating that it located the config.json file. and is continuing execution.

    If your distribution uses Upstart, run:

    initctl status cfsvcd

    If your distribution uses init, run:

    service cfsvcd status

    Note: If Sensor Auto-Upgrade is enabled, check cwp.service

    Systemd example:

    systemctl status cwp.service

    Confirm the agent has network connectivity 

    Run:

    nc -z any_arbitrary_bucket.s3.amazonaws.com 443

    Install nc command if necessary. If no output is printed as a result of the command, network connectivity is available.

    Confirm the agent has initialized 

    Run:

    file /opt/redcanary/spool

    The directory shown above is created upon the first upload attempt. It is emptied when an upload succeeds, so there may be no contents. If it does contain several entries, there may be a problem uploading telemetry. Note that during normal operation, one or two entries might briefly appear.

    Manually stop the agent

    To manually stop the agent, run:

    sudo systemctl stop cfsvcd

    If your distribution uses Upstart, run:

    sudo initctl stop cfsvcd

    If your distribution uses init, run:

    sudo service cfsvcd stop

    Note: If Sensor Auto-Upgrade is enabled, stop the cwp.service

    Systemd example:

    systemctl stop cwp.service

    Manually start the agent

    To manually start the agent, run:

    sudo systemctl start cfsvcd

    If your distribution uses Upstart, run:

    sudo initctl start cfsvcd

    If your distribution uses init, run:

    sudo service cfsvcd start

    Note: If Sensor Auto-Upgrade is enabled, start the cwp.service

    Systemd example:

    systemctl start cwp.service

    Enable Safe Mode

    To manually enable Safe Mode through the command line, run:

    /opt/redcanary/cfctl safe --enable

    Disable Safe Mode

    To disable Safe Mode and return the agent to normal operation through the command line, run:

    /opt/redcanary/cfctl safe --disable

     


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