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.TH DEBUGINFOD 8

.SH NAME

debuginfod \- debuginfo-related http file-server daemon

.SH SYNOPSIS

.B debuginfod

[\fIOPTION\fP]... [\fIPATH\fP]...

.SH DESCRIPTION

\fBdebuginfod\fP serves debuginfo-related artifacts over HTTP.  It

periodically scans a set of directories for ELF/DWARF files and their

associated source code, as well as RPM files containing the above, to

build an index by their buildid.  This index is used when remote

clients use the HTTP webapi, to fetch these files by the same buildid.

If a debuginfod cannot service a given buildid artifact request

itself, and it is configured with information about upstream

debuginfod servers, it queries them for the same information, just as

\fBdebuginfod-find\fP would.  If successful, it locally caches then

relays the file content to the original requester.

If the \fB\-F\fP option is given, each listed PATH creates a thread to

scan for matching ELF/DWARF/source files under the given physical

directory.  Source files are matched with DWARF files based on the

AT_comp_dir (compilation directory) attributes inside it.  Duplicate

directories are ignored.  You may use a file name for a PATH, but

source code indexing may be incomplete; prefer using a directory that

contains the binaries.  Caution: source files listed in the DWARF may

be a path \fIanywhere\fP in the file system, and debuginfod will

readily serve their content on demand.  (Imagine a doctored DWARF file

that lists \fI/etc/passwd\fP as a source file.)  If this is a concern,

audit your binaries with tools such as:

.SAMPLE

% eu-readelf -wline BINARY | sed -n '/^Directory.table/,/^File.name.table/p'

or

% eu-readelf -wline BINARY | sed -n '/^Directory.table/,/^Line.number/p'

or even use debuginfod itself:

% debuginfod -vvv -d :memory: -F BINARY 2>&1 | grep 'recorded.*source'

^C

.ESAMPLE

If the \fB\-R\fP option is given each listed PATH creates a thread to

scan for ELF/DWARF/source files contained in matching RPMs under the

given physical directory.  Duplicate directories are ignored.  You may

use a file name for a PATH, but source code indexing may be

incomplete; prefer using a directory that contains normal RPMs

alongside debuginfo/debugsource RPMs.  Because of complications such

as DWZ-compressed debuginfo, may require \fItwo\fP scan passes to

identify all source code.  Source files for RPMs are only served

from other RPMs, so the caution for \-F does not apply.

If no PATH is listed, or neither \-F nor \-R option is given, then

\fBdebuginfod\fP will simply serve content that it scanned into its

index in previous runs: the data is cumulative.

File names must match extended regular expressions given by the \-I

option and not the \-X option (if any) in order to be considered.

.SH OPTIONS

.TP

.B "\-F"

Activate ELF/DWARF file scanning threads.  The default is off.

.TP

.B "\-R"

Activate RPM file scanning threads.  The default is off.

.TP

.B "\-d FILE" "\-\-database=FILE"

Set the path of the sqlite database used to store the index.  This

file is disposable in the sense that a later rescan will repopulate

data.  It will contain absolute file path names, so it may not be

portable across machines.  It may be frequently read/written, so it

should be on a fast filesytem.  It should not be shared across

machines or users, to maximize sqlite locking performance.  The

default database file is $HOME/.debuginfod.sqlite.

.TP

.B "\-D SQL" "\-\-ddl=SQL"

Execute given sqlite statement after the database is opened and

initialized as extra DDL (SQL data definition language).  This may be

useful to tune performance-related pragmas or indexes.  May be

repeated.  The default is nothing extra.

.TP

.B "\-p NUM" "\-\-port=NUM"

Set the TCP port number on which debuginfod should listen, to service

HTTP requests.  Both IPv4 and IPV6 sockets are opened, if possible.

The webapi is documented below.  The default port number is 8002.

.TP

.B "\-I REGEX"  "\-\-include=REGEX"  "\-X REGEX"  "\-\-exclude=REGEX"

Govern the inclusion and exclusion of file names under the search

paths.  The regular expressions are interpreted as unanchored POSIX

extended REs, thus may include alternation.  They are evaluated

against the full path of each file, based on its \fBrealpath(3)\fP

canonicalization.  By default, all files are included and none are

excluded.  A file that matches both include and exclude REGEX is

excluded.  (The \fIcontents\fP of RPM files are not subject to

inclusion or exclusion filtering: they are all processed.)

.TP

.B "\-t SECONDS"  "\-\-rescan\-time=SECONDS"

Set the rescan time for the file and RPM directories.  This is the

amount of time the scanning threads will wait after finishing a scan,

before doing it again.  A rescan for unchanged files is fast (because

the index also stores the file mtimes).  A time of zero is acceptable,

and means that only one initial scan should performed.  The default

rescan time is 300 seconds.  Receiving a SIGUSR1 signal triggers a new

scan, independent of the rescan time (including if it was zero).

.TP

.B "\-g SECONDS" "\-\-groom\-time=SECONDS"

Set the groom time for the index database.  This is the amount of time

the grooming thread will wait after finishing a grooming pass before

doing it again.  A groom operation quickly rescans all previously

scanned files, only to see if they are still present and current, so

it can deindex obsolete files.  See also the \fIDATA MANAGEMENT\fP

section.  The default groom time is 86400 seconds (1 day).  A time of

zero is acceptable, and means that only one initial groom should be

performed.  Receiving a SIGUSR2 signal triggers a new grooming pass,

independent of the groom time (including if it was zero).

.TP

.B "\-G"

Run an extraordinary maximal-grooming pass at debuginfod startup.

This pass can take considerable time, because it tries to remove any

debuginfo-unrelated content from the RPM-related parts of the index.

It should not be run if any recent RPM-related indexing operations

were aborted early.  It can take considerable space, because it

finishes up with an sqlite "vacuum" operation, which repacks the

database file by triplicating it temporarily.  The default is not to

do maximal-grooming.  See also the \fIDATA MANAGEMENT\fP section.

.TP

.B "\-c NUM"  "\-\-concurrency=NUM"

Set the concurrency limit for all the scanning threads.  While many

threads may be spawned to cover all the given PATHs, only NUM may

concurrently do CPU-intensive operations like parsing an ELF file

or an RPM.  The default is the number of processors on the system;

the minimum is 1.

.TP

.B "\-L"

Traverse symbolic links encountered during traversal of the PATHs,

including across devices - as in \fIfind\ -L\fP.  The default is to

traverse the physical directory structure only, stay on the same

device, and ignore symlinks - as in \fIfind\ -P\ -xdev\fP.  Caution: a

loops in the symbolic directory tree might lead to \fIinfinite

traversal\fP.

.TP

.B "\-v"

Increase verbosity of logging to the standard error file descriptor.

May be repeated to increase details.  The default verbosity is 0.

.SH WEBAPI

.\" Much of the following text is duplicated with debuginfod-find.1

debuginfod's webapi resembles ordinary file service, where a GET

request with a path containing a known buildid results in a file.

Unknown buildid / request combinations result in HTTP error codes.

This file service resemblance is intentional, so that an installation

can take advantage of standard HTTP management infrastructure.

There are three requests.  In each case, the buildid is encoded as a

lowercase hexadecimal string.  For example, for a program \fI/bin/ls\fP,

look at the ELF note GNU_BUILD_ID:

.SAMPLE

% readelf -n /bin/ls | grep -A4 build.id

Note section [ 4] '.note.gnu.buildid' of 36 bytes at offset 0x340:

Owner          Data size  Type

GNU                   20  GNU_BUILD_ID

Build ID: 8713b9c3fb8a720137a4a08b325905c7aaf8429d

.ESAMPLE

Then the hexadecimal BUILDID is simply:

.SAMPLE

8713b9c3fb8a720137a4a08b325905c7aaf8429d

.ESAMPLE

.SS /buildid/\fIBUILDID\fP/debuginfo

If the given buildid is known to the server, this request will result

in a binary object that contains the customary \fB.*debug_*\fP

sections.  This may be a split debuginfo file as created by

\fBstrip\fP, or it may be an original unstripped executable.

.SS /buildid/\fIBUILDID\fP/executable

If the given buildid is known to the server, this request will result

in a binary object that contains the normal executable segments.  This

may be a executable stripped by \fBstrip\fP, or it may be an original

unstripped executable.  \fBET_DYN\fP shared libraries are considered

to be a type of executable.

.SS /buildid/\fIBUILDID\fP/source\fI/SOURCE/FILE\fP

If the given buildid is known to the server, this request will result

in a binary object that contains the source file mentioned.  The path

should be absolute.  Relative path names commonly appear in the DWARF

file's source directory, but these paths are relative to

individual compilation unit AT_comp_dir paths, and yet an executable

is made up of multiple CUs.  Therefore, to disambiguate, debuginfod

expects source queries to prefix relative path names with the CU

compilation-directory, followed by a mandatory "/".

Note: contrary to RFC 3986, the client should not elide \fB../\fP or

\fB/./\fP or extraneous \fB///\fP sorts of path components in the

directory names, because if this is how those names appear in the

DWARF files, that is what debuginfod needs to see too.

For example:

.TS

l l.

#include <stdio.h>	/buildid/BUILDID/source/usr/include/stdio.h

/path/to/foo.c	/buildid/BUILDID/source/path/to/foo.c

\../bar/foo.c AT_comp_dir=/zoo/	/buildid/BUILDID/source/zoo//../bar/foo.c

.TE

.SS /metrics

This endpoint returns a Prometheus formatted text/plain dump of a

variety of statistics about the operation of the debuginfod server.

The exact set of metrics and their meanings may change in future

versions.  Caution: configuration information (path names, versions)

may be disclosed.

.SH DATA MANAGEMENT

debuginfod stores its index in an sqlite database in a densely packed

set of interlinked tables.  While the representation is as efficient

as we have been able to make it, it still takes a considerable amount

of data to record all debuginfo-related data of potentially a great

many files.  This section offers some advice about the implications.

As a general explanation for size, consider that debuginfod indexes

ELF/DWARF files, it stores their names and referenced source file

names, and buildids will be stored.  When indexing RPMs, it stores

every file name \fIof or in\fP an RPM, every buildid, plus every

source file name referenced from a DWARF file.  (Indexing RPMs takes

more space because the source files often reside in separate

subpackages that may not be indexed at the same pass, so extra

metadata has to be kept.)

Getting down to numbers, in the case of Fedora RPMs (essentially,

gzip-compressed cpio files), the sqlite index database tends to be

from 0.5% to 3% of their size.  It's larger for binaries that are

assembled out of a great many source files, or packages that carry

much debuginfo-unrelated content.  It may be even larger during the

indexing phase due to temporary sqlite write-ahead-logging files;

these are checkpointed (cleaned out and removed) at shutdown.  It may

be helpful to apply tight \-I or \-X regular-expression constraints to

exclude files from scanning that you know have no debuginfo-relevant

content.

As debuginfod runs, it periodically rescans its target directories,

and any new content found is added to the database.  Old content, such

as data for files that have disappeared or that have been replaced

with newer versions is removed at a periodic \fIgrooming\fP pass.

This means that the sqlite files grow fast during initial indexing,

slowly during index rescans, and periodically shrink during grooming.

There is also an optional one-shot \fImaximal grooming\fP pass is

available.  It removes information debuginfo-unrelated data from the

RPM content index such as file names found in RPMs ("rpm sdef"

records) that are not referred to as source files from any binaries

find in RPMs ("rpm sref" records).  This can save considerable disk

space.  However, it is slow and temporarily requires up to twice the

database size as free space.  Worse: it may result in missing

source-code info if the RPM traversals were interrupted, so the not

all source file references were known.  Use it rarely to polish a

complete index.

You should ensure that ample disk space remains available.  (The flood

of error messages on -ENOSPC is ugly and nagging.  But, like for most

other errors, debuginfod will resume when resources permit.)  If

necessary, debuginfod can be stopped, the database file moved or

removed, and debuginfod restarted.

sqlite offers several performance-related options in the form of

pragmas.  Some may be useful to fine-tune the defaults plus the

debuginfod extras.  The \-D option may be useful to tell debuginfod to

execute the given bits of SQL after the basic schema creation

commands.  For example, the "synchronous", "cache_size",

"auto_vacuum", "threads", "journal_mode" pragmas may be fun to tweak

via \-D, if you're searching for peak performance.  The "optimize",

"wal_checkpoint" pragmas may be useful to run periodically, outside

debuginfod.  The default settings are performance- rather than

reliability-oriented, so a hardware crash might corrupt the database.

In these cases, it may be necessary to manually delete the sqlite

database and start over.

As debuginfod changes in the future, we may have no choice but to

change the database schema in an incompatible manner.  If this

happens, new versions of debuginfod will issue SQL statements to

\fIdrop\fP all prior schema & data, and start over.  So, disk space

will not be wasted for retaining a no-longer-useable dataset.

In summary, if your system can bear a 0.5%-3% index-to-RPM-dataset

size ratio, and slow growth afterwards, you should not need to

worry about disk space.  If a system crash corrupts the database,

or you want to force debuginfod to reset and start over, simply

erase the sqlite file before restarting debuginfod.

.SH SECURITY

debuginfod \fBdoes not\fP include any particular security features.

While it is robust with respect to inputs, some abuse is possible.  It

forks a new thread for each incoming HTTP request, which could lead to

a denial-of-service in terms of RAM, CPU, disk I/O, or network I/O.

If this is a problem, users are advised to install debuginfod with a

HTTPS reverse-proxy front-end that enforces site policies for

firewalling, authentication, integrity, authorization, and load

control.  The \fI/metrics\fP webapi endpoint is probably not

appropriate for disclosure to the public.

When relaying queries to upstream debuginfods, debuginfod \fBdoes not\fP

include any particular security features.  It trusts that the binaries

returned by the debuginfods are accurate.  Therefore, the list of

servers should include only trustworthy ones.  If accessed across HTTP

rather than HTTPS, the network should be trustworthy.  Authentication

information through the internal \fIlibcurl\fP library is not currently

enabled.

.SH "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES"

.TP 21

.B DEBUGINFOD_URLS

This environment variable contains a list of URL prefixes for trusted

debuginfod instances.  Alternate URL prefixes are separated by space.

Avoid referential loops that cause a server to contact itself, directly

or indirectly - the results would be hilarious.

.TP 21

.B DEBUGINFOD_TIMEOUT

This environment variable governs the timeout for each debuginfod HTTP

connection.  A server that fails to provide at least 100K of data

within this many seconds is skipped. The default is 90 seconds.  (Zero

or negative means "no timeout".)

.TP 21

.B DEBUGINFOD_CACHE_PATH

This environment variable governs the location of the cache where

downloaded files are kept.  It is cleaned periodically as this

program is reexecuted.  The default is $HOME/.debuginfod_client_cache.

.\" XXX describe cache eviction policy

.SH FILES

.LP

.PD .1v

.TP 20

.B $HOME/.debuginfod.sqlite

Default database file.

.PD

.TP 20

.B $HOME/.debuginfod_client_cache

Default cache directory for content from upstream debuginfods.

.PD

.SH "SEE ALSO"

.I "debuginfod-find(1)"

.I "sqlite3(1)"

.I \%https://prometheus.io/docs/instrumenting/exporters/