Sysdig is a powerful open source tool for container troubleshooting, performance tunning and security investigation.

This repository implements a kubectl plugin which triggers a capture in the underlying host which is running a pod. A capture file is created for a duration of time and is download locally in order to use it with Sysdig Inspect.

In order to use this plugin, just copy the kubectl-capture to your PATH, and ensure it has execution permissions.

You can verify its installation using kubectl:

$ kubectl plugin list
The following kubectl-compatible plugins are available:

/usr/local/bin/kubectl-capture

In this case is installed into /usr/local/bin, but will work with another location listed in PATH.

Once you have the kubectl plugin installed, you can start taking captures:

$ kubectl capture nginx-78f5d695bd-bcbd8
Sysdig is starting to capture system calls:

Node: gke-sysdig-work-default-pool-e35da3a1-m8vp
Pod: nginx-78f5d695bd-bcbd8
Duration: 30 seconds
Parameters for Sysdig: -S -M 30 -pk -z -w /capture-nginx-78f5d695bd-bcbd8-1550246926.scap.gz

The capture has been downloaded to your hard disk at:
~/captures/capture-nginx-78f5d695bd-bcbd8-1550246926.scap.gz

And then, you can start troubleshooting with Sysdig Inspect.

When the capture container is being spinned, it takes some time to compile the Sysdig Kernel module and start to capture system calls. You can check the logs of the Sysdig Capture Pod if you need to know with accuracy when Sysdig starts to capture.

There are a few parameters for this plugin:

Aditionally, all the flags for the sysdig cli tool are supported. You can check more of these parameters in its documentation.

You can uninstall this plugin from kubectl by simply removing it from your PATH:

$ rm /usr/local/bin/kubectl-capture