The idea of this project is to have a Kubernetes Operator that would use eBPF probe to track the number of times a syscall was called. All the C code in this repo was generated with the help of AI, and even that in Reconcile function was aided a lot by AI.

Currently, there are following issues with the project:

• Unable to keep a track of execve syscall
• Unable to increment the counter for syscall.
  • Counter gets reset each time Reconcile runs (which is every 5s right now)
  • Removing defer objs.Close() and defer tpLink.Close() as suggested by AI causes the file /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe to get populated like crazy! Although, it's not so much of a disk issue as it's a CPU issue (at least when doing a sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe).

I'm neither a C nor an eBPF expert. The idea for this project came from recently hosting a maintainer of Falco project in a virtual meetup. I have long been fascinated by low level stuff, especially syscalls.

• go version v1.23.0+
• docker version 17.03+.
• kubectl version v1.11.3+.
• Access to a Kubernetes v1.11.3+ cluster.

Build and push your image to the location specified by IMG:

Run go generate ./... to build the object code:

$ go generate ./...

This will generate a bpf_bpfel.o file in bpf directory.

make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/syscallcounter:tag

Create a kind cluster using the YAML file (note that it requires mounting bunch of sensitive files to the k8s cluster). You might also need to turn off SELinux or other setup running on your system:

$ kind create cluster --config kind-cluster-with-extramounts.yaml

NOTE: This image ought to be published in the personal registry you specified. And it is required to have access to pull the image from the working environment. Make sure you have the proper permission to the registry if the above commands don’t work.

Install the CRDs into the cluster:

make install

Deploy the Manager to the cluster with the image specified by IMG:

make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/syscallcounter:tag

NOTE: If you encounter RBAC errors, you may need to grant yourself cluster-admin privileges or be logged in as admin.

Create instances of your solution You can apply the samples (examples) from the config/sample:

kubectl apply -k config/samples/

NOTE: Ensure that the samples has default values to test it out.

Delete the instances (CRs) from the cluster:

kubectl delete -k config/samples/

Delete the APIs(CRDs) from the cluster:

make uninstall

UnDeploy the controller from the cluster:

make undeploy

Following the options to release and provide this solution to the users.

1. Build the installer for the image built and published in the registry:

make build-installer IMG=<some-registry>/syscallcounter:tag

NOTE: The makefile target mentioned above generates an 'install.yaml' file in the dist directory. This file contains all the resources built with Kustomize, which are necessary to install this project without its dependencies.

2. Using the installer

Users can just run 'kubectl apply -f ' to install the project, i.e.:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<org>/syscallcounter/<tag or branch>/dist/install.yaml

1. Build the chart using the optional helm plugin

kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm/v1-alpha

2. See that a chart was generated under 'dist/chart', and users can obtain this solution from there.

NOTE: If you change the project, you need to update the Helm Chart using the same command above to sync the latest changes. Furthermore, if you create webhooks, you need to use the above command with the '--force' flag and manually ensure that any custom configuration previously added to 'dist/chart/values.yaml' or 'dist/chart/manager/manager.yaml' is manually re-applied afterwards.

// TODO(user): Add detailed information on how you would like others to contribute to this project

NOTE: Run make help for more information on all potential make targets

More information can be found via the Kubebuilder Documentation

Copyright 2025.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.