Run OBI as a standalone process

OBI can run as a standalone Linux OS process with elevated privileges that can inspect other running processes.

Download and verify

OBI provides pre-built binaries for Linux (amd64 and arm64). Download the latest release from the releases page. Each release includes:

• obi-v<version>-linux-amd64.tar.gz - Linux AMD64/x86_64 archive
• obi-v<version>-linux-arm64.tar.gz - Linux ARM64 archive
• SHA256SUMS - Checksums for verification

Set your desired version and architecture:

# Set your desired version (find latest at
# https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/releases)
VERSION=0.5.0

# Determine your architecture
# For Intel/AMD 64-bit: amd64
# For ARM 64-bit: arm64
ARCH=amd64

# Download the archive for your architecture
wget https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/releases/download/v${VERSION}/obi-v${VERSION}-linux-${ARCH}.tar.gz

# Download checksums
wget https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/releases/download/v${VERSION}/SHA256SUMS

# Verify the archive
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing

# Extract the archive
tar -xzf obi-v${VERSION}-linux-${ARCH}.tar.gz

The archive contains:

• obi - Main OBI binary
• k8s-cache - Kubernetes cache binary
• obi-java-agent.jar - Java instrumentation agent
• LICENSE - Project license
• NOTICE - Legal notices
• NOTICES/ - Third-party licenses and attributions

Install to system

After extracting the archive, you can install the binaries to a location in your PATH so they can be used from any directory.

The following example installs to /usr/local/bin, which is a standard location on most Linux distributions. You can install to any other directory in your PATH:

# Move binaries to a directory in your PATH
sudo cp obi /usr/local/bin/

# The Java agent MUST be in the same directory as the OBI binary
sudo cp obi-java-agent.jar /usr/local/bin/

# Verify installation
obi --version

Set up OBI

1. Create a configuration file following the configuration options documentation. You can start with the OBI configuration YAML example.

2. Run OBI as a privileged process:

   sudo obi --config=<path to config file>
   

   If you did not install OBI to your PATH, you can run it from the extracted directory:

   sudo ./obi --config=<path to config file>
   

Permissions

OBI requires elevated privileges to function properly. For more information about the specific capabilities required, see the security documentation.