This section walks through setting up and configuring Fleet via the CLI. If you already have a running fleet instance, skip ahead to [Logging In To An Existing Fleet Instance](#logging-in-to-an-existing-fleet-instance) to configure the `fleetctl` CLI.
For the sake of this tutorial, we will be using the local development Docker Compose infrastructure to run Fleet locally. This is documented in some detail in the [developer documentation](../03-Contributing/01-Building-Fleet.md#development-infrastructure), but the following are the minimal set of commands that you can run from the root of the repository (assuming that you have a working Go/JavaScript toolchain installed along with Docker Compose):
At this point, the MySQL database doesn't have any users in it. Because of this, Fleet is exposing a one-time setup endpoint. Before we can hit that endpoint (by running `fleetctl setup`), we have to first configure the local `fleetctl` context.
Now, since our Fleet instance is local in this tutorial, we didn't get a valid TLS certificate, so we need to run the following to configure our Fleet context:
```
fleetctl config set --address https://localhost:8080 --tls-skip-verify
[+] Set the address config key to "https://localhost:8080" in the "default" context
[+] Set the tls-skip-verify config key to "true" in the "default" context
```
Now, if you were connecting to a Fleet instance for real, you wouldn't want to skip TLS certificate verification, so you might run something like:
```
fleetctl config set --address https://fleet.corp.example.com
[+] Set the address config key to "https://fleet.corp.example.com" in the "default" context
[+] Fleet setup successful and context configured!
```
It's possible to specify the password via the `--password` flag or the `$PASSWORD` environment variable, but be cautious of the security implications of such an action. For local use, the interactive mode above is the most secure.
### Query hosts
To run a simple query against all hosts, you might run something like the following:
fleetctl config set --address https://fleet.corp.example.com
[+] Set the address config key to "https://fleet.corp.example.com" in the "default" context
fleetctl login
Log in using the standard Fleet credentials.
Email: mike@arpaia.co
Password:
[+] Fleet login successful and context configured!
```
Once your local context is configured, you can use the above `fleetctl` normally. See `fleetctl --help` for more information.
### Logging in with SAML (SSO) authentication
Users that authenticate to Fleet via SSO should retrieve their API token from the UI and set it manually in their `fleetctl` configuration (instead of logging in via `fleetctl login`).
1. Go to the "My account" page in Fleet (https://fleet.corp.example.com/profile). Click the "Get API Token" button to bring up a modal with the API token.
The `fleetctl get <fleet-entity-here> > <configuration-file-name-here>.yml` command allows you retrieve the current configuration and create a new file for specified Fleet entity (queries, packs, etc.)
Fleet supports osquery's file carving functionality as of Fleet 3.3.0. This allows the Fleet server to request files (and sets of files) from osquery agents, returning the full contents to Fleet.
File carving data can be either stored in Fleet's database or to an external S3 bucket. For information on how to configure the latter, consult the [configuration docs](../02-Deploying/03-Configuration.md#s3-file-carving-backend).
Compression of the carve contents can be enabled with the `carver_compression` flag in osquery. When used, the carve results will be compressed with [Zstandard](https://facebook.github.io/zstd/) compression.
### Usage
File carves are initiated with osquery queries. Issue a query to the `carves` table, providing `carve = 1` along with the desired path(s) as constraints.
For example, to extract the `/etc/hosts` file on a host with hostname `mac-workstation`:
```
fleetctl query --hosts mac-workstation --query 'SELECT * FROM carves WHERE carve = 1 AND path = "/etc/hosts"'
```
The standard osquery file globbing syntax is also supported to carve entire directories or more:
fleetctl query --hosts mac-workstation --query 'SELECT * FROM carves WHERE carve = 1 AND path LIKE "/etc/%%"'
```
#### Retrieving carves
List the non-expired (see below) carves with `fleetctl get carves`. Note that carves will not be available through this command until osquery checks in to the Fleet server with the first of the carve contents. This can take some time from initiation of the carve.
To also retrieve expired carves, use `fleetctl get carves --expired`.
Contents of carves are returned as .tar archives, and compressed if that option is configured.
To download the contents of a carve with ID 3, use
Carve contents remain available for 24 hours after the first data is provided from the osquery client. After this time, the carve contents are cleaned from the database and the carve is marked as "expired".
The same is not true if S3 is used as the storage backend. In that scenario, it is suggested to setup a [bucket lifecycle configuration](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/object-lifecycle-mgmt.html) to avoid retaining data in excess. Fleet, in an "eventual consistent" manner (i.e. by periodically performing comparisons), will keep the metadata relative to the files carves in sync with what it is actually available in the bucket.
