fleet/orbit

Orbit is a lightweight osquery installer and autoupdater. With Orbit, it's easy to deploy osquery, manage configurations, and keep things up-to-date. Orbit eases the deployment of osquery connected with a Fleet server, and is a (near) drop-in replacement for osquery in a variety of deployment scenarios.

Orbit is the recommended agent for Fleet. But Orbit can be used with or without Fleet, and Fleet can be used with or without Orbit.

How to build from source

To build orbit we use goreleaser.

For reference, here are the build configuration files:

• Goreleaser github workflow
• Goreleaser configuration file for each platform:
  • goreleaser-linux.yml
  • goreleaser-linux-arm64.yml
  • goreleaser-macos.yml
  • goreleaser-windows.yml
  • goreleaser-windows.yml

Following are the commands to build in case you can't use goreleaser.

IMPORTANT: We recommend you build orbit natively and not cross compile to avoid any build or runtime errors.

macOS

CGO_ENABLED=1 \
CODESIGN_IDENTITY=$CODESIGN_IDENTITY \
ORBIT_VERSION=$VERSION \
ORBIT_BINARY_PATH=./orbit-macos \
go run ./orbit/tools/build/build.go

Windows

CGO_ENABLED=0 \
GOOS=windows \
GOARCH=amd64 \
go build \
-trimpath \
-ldflags="-X github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/pkg/build.Version=$VERSION \
-X github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/pkg/build.Commit=$COMMIT \
-X github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/pkg/build.Date=$DATE" \
-o ./orbit.exe ./orbit/cmd/orbit

Linux

CGO_ENABLED=1 \
GOOS=linux \
GOARCH=amd64 \
go build \
-trimpath \
-ldflags="-X github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/pkg/build.Version=$VERSION \
-X github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/pkg/build.Commit=$COMMIT \
-X github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/pkg/build.Date=$DATE" \
-o ./orbit-linux ./orbit/cmd/orbit

Bugs

To report a bug or request a feature, create an issue in the fleet GitHub repository.

Orbit Development

Run Orbit From Source

To execute orbit from source, use the following commands:

Connect to a Fleet server

Modify the fleet-url and enroll-secret as appropriate:

go run github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/cmd/orbit \
    --dev-mode \
    --disable-updates \
    --root-dir /tmp/orbit \
    --fleet-url https://localhost:8080 \
    --insecure \
    --enroll-secret Pz3zC0NMDdZfb3FtqiLgwoexItojrYh/ \
    -- --verbose

Using a custom flagfile

With a flagfile.txt for osqueryd:

go run github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/cmd/orbit \
    --dev-mode \
    --disable-updates \
    --root-dir /tmp/orbit \
    -- --flagfile=flagfile.txt --verbose

Open an interactive shell to run SQL

This can be useful for building/testing extension tables:

go run github.com/fleetdm/fleet/v4/orbit/cmd/orbit \
    --dev-mode \
    --disable-updates \
    --root-dir /tmp/orbit \
    shell

Generate Installer Packages from Orbit Source

The fleetctl package command generates installers by fetching the targets/executables from a TUF repository. To generate an installer that contains an Orbit built from source you need to setup a local TUF repository. The following document explains how you can generate a TUF repository, and installers that use it tools/tuf/test.

FAQs

How does Orbit compare with Kolide Launcher?

Orbit is inspired by the success of Kolide Launcher, and approaches a similar problem domain with new strategies informed by the challenges encountered in real world deployments. Orbit does not share any code with Launcher.

• Both Orbit and Launcher use The Update Framework specification for managing updates. Orbit utilizes the official go-tuf library, while Launcher has it's own implementation of the specification.
• Orbit can be deployed as a (near) drop-in replacement for osquery, supporting full customization of the osquery flags. Launcher heavily manages the osquery flags making deployment outside of Fleet or Kolide's SaaS difficult.
• Orbit prefers the battle-tested plugins of osquery. Orbit uses the built-in logging, configuration, and live report plugins, while Launcher uses custom implementations.
• Orbit prefers the built-in osquery remote APIs. Launcher utilizes a custom gRPC API that has led to issues with character encoding, load balancers/proxies, and request size limits.
• Orbit encourages use of the osquery performance Watchdog, while Launcher disables the Watchdog.

Additionally, Orbit aims to tackle problems out of scope for Launcher:

• Configure updates via release channels, providing more granular control over agent versioning.
• Manage osquery startup flags from a remote (Fleet) server.
• Support for deploying and updating osquery extensions.
• Manage osquery versions from a remote (Fleet) server.

Is Orbit Free?

Yes! Orbit is licensed under an MIT license and all uses are encouraged.

How does orbit update osquery? And how do the stable and edge channels get triggered to update osquery on a self hosted Fleet instance?

Orbit uses a configurable update server. We expect that many folks will just use the update server we manage (similar to what Kolide does with Launcher's update server). We are also offering tooling for self-managing an update server as part of Fleet Premium (the subscription offering).

Community

Chat

Please join us in the #fleet channel on osquery Slack.