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Parca Agent

Parca Agent is an always-on sampling profiler that uses eBPF to capture raw profiling data with very low overhead. It observes user-space and kernel-space stacktraces 19 times per second and builds pprof formatted profiles from the extracted data. Read more details in the design documentation.

The collected data can be viewed locally via HTTP endpoints and then be configured to be sent to a Parca server to be queried and analyzed over time.

Requirements

Linux Kernel version 5.3+ with BTF

Quickstart

See the Kubernetes Getting Started.

Language Support

Parca Agent is continuously enhancing its support for multiple languages. Incomplete list of languages we currently support:

C, C++, Go (with extended support), Rust
.NET, Deno, Erlang, Java, Julia, Node.js, Wasmtime, PHP 8 and above
Ruby, Python

Please check our docs for further information.

Note

Further language support is coming in the upcoming weeks and months.

Supported Profiles

Types of profiles that are available:

CPU
Soon: Network usage, Allocations

Note

Please check our docs if your language is supported.

The following types of profiles require explicit instrumentation:

Runtime specific information such as Goroutines

Debugging

Web UI

The HTTP endpoints can be used to inspect the active profilers, by visiting port 7071 of the process (the host-port that the agent binds to can be configured using the --http-address flag).

On a minikube cluster that might look like the following:

And by clicking "Show Profile" in one of the rows, the currently collected profile will be rendered once the collection finishes (this can take up to 10 seconds).

A raw profile can also be downloaded here by clicking "Download Pprof". Note that in the case of native stack traces such as produced from compiled language like C, C++, Go, Rust, etc. are not symbolized and if this pprof profile is analyzed using the standard pprof tooling the symbols will need to be available to the tooling.

Logging

To debug potential errors, enable debug logging using --log-level=debug.

Configuration

Flags:

Usage: parca-agent

Flags:
  -h, --help                       Show context-sensitive help.
      --log-level="info"           Log level.
      --log-format="logfmt"        Configure if structured logging as JSON or as
                                   logfmt
      --http-address="127.0.0.1:7071"
                                   Address to bind HTTP server to.
      --version                    Show application version.
      --node="hostname"           The name of the node that the process is
                                   running on. If on Kubernetes, this must match
                                   the Kubernetes node name.
      --config-path=""             Path to config file.
      --memlock-rlimit=0           The value for the maximum number of bytes
                                   of memory that may be locked into RAM. It is
                                   used to ensure the agent can lock memory for
                                   eBPF maps. 0 means no limit.
      --mutex-profile-fraction=0
                                   Fraction of mutex profile samples to collect.
      --block-profile-rate=0       Sample rate for block profile.
      --profiling-duration=10s     The agent profiling duration to use. Leave
                                   this empty to use the defaults.
      --profiling-cpu-sampling-frequency=19
                                   The frequency at which profiling data is
                                   collected, e.g., 19 samples per second.
      --profiling-perf-event-buffer-poll-interval=250ms
                                   The interval at which the perf event buffer
                                   is polled for new events.
      --profiling-perf-event-buffer-processing-interval=100ms
                                   The interval at which the perf event buffer
                                   is processed.
      --profiling-perf-event-buffer-worker-count=4
                                   The number of workers that process the perf
                                   event buffer.
      --metadata-external-labels=KEY=VALUE;...
                                   Label(s) to attach to all profiles.
      --metadata-container-runtime-socket-path=STRING
                                   The filesystem path to the container runtimes
                                   socket. Leave this empty to use the defaults.
      --metadata-disable-caching
                                   Disable caching of metadata.
      --local-store-directory=STRING
                                   The local directory to store the profiling
                                   data.
      --remote-store-address=STRING
                                   gRPC address to send profiles and symbols to.
      --remote-store-bearer-token=STRING
                                   Bearer token to authenticate with store
                                   ($PARCA_BEARER_TOKEN).
      --remote-store-bearer-token-file=STRING
                                   File to read bearer token from to
                                   authenticate with store.
      --remote-store-insecure      Send gRPC requests via plaintext instead of
                                   TLS.
      --remote-store-insecure-skip-verify
                                   Skip TLS certificate verification.
      --remote-store-batch-write-interval=10s
                                   Interval between batch remote client writes.
                                   Leave this empty to use the default value of
                                   10s.
      --remote-store-rpc-logging-enable
                                   Enable gRPC logging.
      --remote-store-rpc-unary-timeout=5m
                                   Maximum timeout window for unary gRPC
                                   requests including retries.
      --debuginfo-directories=/usr/lib/debug,...
                                   Ordered list of local directories to search
                                   for debuginfo files.
      --debuginfo-temp-dir="/tmp"
                                   The local directory path to store the interim
                                   debuginfo files.
      --debuginfo-strip            Only upload information needed for
                                   symbolization. If false the exact binary the
                                   agent sees will be uploaded unmodified.
      --debuginfo-compress         Compress debuginfo files' DWARF sections
                                   before uploading.
      --debuginfo-upload-disable
                                   Disable debuginfo collection and upload.
      --debuginfo-upload-max-parallel=25
                                   The maximum number of debuginfo upload
                                   requests to make in parallel.
      --debuginfo-upload-timeout-duration=2m
                                   The timeout duration to cancel upload
                                   requests.
      --debuginfo-upload-cache-duration=5m
                                   The duration to cache debuginfo upload
                                   responses for.
      --debuginfo-disable-caching
                                   Disable caching of debuginfo.
      --symbolizer-jit-disable     Disable JIT symbolization.
      --otlp-address=STRING        The endpoint to send OTLP traces to.
      --otlp-exporter="grpc"       The OTLP exporter to use.
      --object-file-pool-eviction-policy="lru"
                                   The eviction policy to use for the object
                                   file pool.
      --object-file-pool-size=100
                                   The maximum number of object files to keep in
                                   the pool. This is used to avoid re-reading
                                   object files from disk. It keeps FDs open,
                                   so it should be kept in sync with ulimits.
                                   0 means no limit.
      --dwarf-unwinding-disable    Do not unwind using .eh_frame information.
      --dwarf-unwinding-mixed      Unwind using .eh_frame information and frame
                                   pointers.
      --python-unwinding-disable
                                   Disable Python unwinder.
      --ruby-unwinding-disable     Disable Ruby unwinder.
      --analytics-opt-out          Opt out of sending anonymous usage
                                   statistics.
      --telemetry-disable-panic-reporting

      --telemetry-stderr-buffer-size-kb=4096

      --bpf-verbose-logging        Enable verbose BPF logging.
      --bpf-events-buffer-size=8192
                                   Size in pages of the events buffer.
      --verbose-bpf-logging        [deprecated] Use --bpf-verbose-logging.
                                   Enable verbose BPF logging.

Security

Parca Agent is required to be running as root user (or CAP_SYS_ADMIN). Various security precautions have been taken to protect users running Parca Agent. See details in Security Considerations.

To report a security vulnerability, see this guide.

Contributing

Check out our Contributing Guide to get started!

License

User-space code: Apache 2

Kernel-space code (eBPF profilers): GNU General Public License, version 2

Credits

Thanks to:

Aqua Security for creating libbpfgo (cgo bindings for libbpf), while we contributed several features to it, they have made it spectacularly easy for us to contribute and it has been a great collaboration. Their use of libbpf in tracee has also been a helpful resource.
Kinvolk for creating Inspektor Gadget; some parts of this project were inspired by parts of it.

License

parca-dev/parca-agent

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