Fleetctl (pronounced "Fleet control") is a CLI tool for managing Fleet from the command line. Fleetctl enables a GitOps workflow with Fleet and osquery. With fleetctl, you can manage configurations, queries, generate osquery installers, etc.
You can use `fleetctl` to accomplish many tasks you would typically need to do through the Fleet UI. You can even set up or apply configuration files to the Fleet server.
Much of the functionality available in the Fleet UI is also available in `fleetctl`. You can run queries, add and remove users, generate osquery installers to add new hosts, get information about existing hosts, and more! The following commands are available for use with `fleetctl`:
| config | Modify Fleet server connection settings |
| goquery | Start the goquery interface |
| user | Manage Fleet users |
| debug | Tools for debugging Fleet |
| preview | Start a preview deployment of the Fleet server |
| updates | Manage client updates |
| hosts | Manage Fleet hosts |
| vulnerability-data-stream | Download the vulnerability data stream |
| package | Create an Orbit installer package |
| help, h | Shows a list of commands or help for one command |
### Get more info about a command
Each command available to `fleetctl` has a help menu with additional information. To pull up the help menu, run `fleetctl <command> --help`, replacing `<command>` with the command you're looking up:
```
> fleetctl setup --help
```
You will see more info about the command, including the usage and information about any additional commands and options (or 'flags') that can be passed with it:
```
NAME:
fleetctl setup - Set up a Fleet instance
USAGE:
fleetctl setup [options]
OPTIONS:
--email value Email of the admin user to create (required) [$EMAIL]
--name value Name or nickname of the admin user to create (required) [$NAME]
--password value Password for the admin user (recommended to use interactive entry) [$PASSWORD]
--org-name value Name of the organization (required) [$ORG_NAME]
--config value Path to the fleetctl config file (default: "/Users/ksatter/.fleet/config") [$CONFIG]
--context value Name of fleetctl config context to use (default: "default") [$CONTEXT]
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](https://fleetdm.com/docs/contributing/building-fleet#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, hosts, etc.)
The `fleetctl apply -f <configuration-file-name-here>.yml` allows you to apply the current configuration in the specified file.
When a new configuration is applied, agent options are validated. If any errors are found, you will receive an error message describing the issue and the new configuration will not be applied. You can also verify that your agent options are valid without applying using the `--dry-run` flag. Validation is based on the latest version of osquery. If you don't use the latest version of osquery, you can override validation using the `--force` flag. This will update agent options even if they are invalid.
Check out the [configuration files](https://fleetdm.com/docs/using-fleet/configuration-files) section of the documentation for example yaml files.
When running automated workflows using the Fleet API, we recommend an API-only user's API key rather than the API key of a regular user. A regular user's API key expires frequently for security purposes, requiring routine updates. Meanwhile, an API-only user's key does not expire.
To create your new API-only user, run `fleetctl user create` and pass values for `--name`, `--email`, and `--password`, and include the `--api-only` flag:
An API-only user can be given the same permissions as a regular user. The default access level is `Observer`. For more information on permissions, see the [user permissions documentation](https://fleetdm.com/docs/using-fleet/permissions#user-permissions).
If you'd like your API-only user to have a different access level than the default `Observer` role, you can specify what level of access the new user should have using the `--global-role` flag:
To use fleetctl with an API-only user, you will need to log in with `fleetctl login`. Once done, you'll be able to perform tasks using `fleetctl` as your new API-only user.
> If you are using a version of Fleet older than `4.13.0`, you will need to [reset the API-only user's password](https://github.com/fleetdm/fleet/blob/a1eba3d5b945cb3339004dd1181526c137dc901c/docs/Using-Fleet/fleetctl-CLI.md#reset-the-password) before running queries.
For example, say the credentials provided were `api@example.com` for the email and `foobar12345` for the password. You may call the [Log in API](https://fleetdm.com/docs/using-fleet/rest-api#log-in) like so:
The [Log in API](https://fleetdm.com/docs/using-fleet/rest-api#log-in) will return a response similar to the one below with the API token included that will not expire.
To use `fleetctl` with your regular user account but occasionally use your API-only user for specific cases, you can set up your `fleetctl` config with a new `context` to hold the credentials of your API-only user:
From there on, you can use the `--context api` flag whenever you need to use the API-only user's identity, rather than logging in and out to switch accounts:
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](https://fleetdm.com/docs/deploying/configuration#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.
- A file containing a set of all the errors that happened in the server during the interval of time defined by the [logging_error_retention_period](https://fleetdm.com/docs/deploying/configuration#logging-error-retention-period) configuration.
