fingerprint-app 0.2

Fingerprinting application dependencies

FingerPrint is a software tool which can analyze arbitrary lists of binaries and save all their dependencies information in a file (called Swirl) along with other information.

A Swirl can then be used to understand if the given application can run on another system or if some of the dependencies got modified since the Swirl creation. Swirl can also be used to deploy the traced application on a Rocks cluster.

Requirements

FingerPrint will work only on a Linux system, it does not have any major requirement other than Python from version 2.4 up to 2.7. FingerPrint is currently tested on RHEL (5.x and 6.x) and (Debian 5.x and 6.x) systems.

It also requires a minimal set of core utilities (bash, sed, grep, ldd, and objdump) but all these tools are generally present on most of the systems.

If found on the system (they are not required), fingerprint uses:

• prelink (to remove pre-linking information from libraries and get their hash)

• dpkg or rpm (to record package version and info regarding dependencies)

FingerPrint comes with a stack tracing facility that can be used to determine which shared library opens a file. The stack tracing module is not required for the proper functioning. To compile the module you will need libunwind shared libraries (version 0.99 comes with libunwind-ptrace compiled statically so it does not work :-(). The stack tracing facility is written in C, so it requires gcc.

Installation

The simplest way to use FingerPrint is to checkout the source code

# git clone https://github.com/rocksclusters/FingerPrint.git

and then add to your PATH the ./bin directory of the source code

# cd FingerPrint
# export PATH=$PATH:$PWD/bin

After this steps you can start to use fingerprint. The following steps are only required for advanced users. To invoke unit-tests run:

# python setup.py test

Unit-tests generate a lot of outputs and errors but if they all succeed at the end you will see the following lines:

Ran 4 tests in 38.870s

OK

If you want to install FingerPrint on your system python path you can follow the standard distutils procedure. If you want the stack tracing functionality copy the file setup.cfg.template into setup.cfg and insert the paths to your libunwind before proceeding. To build and install FingerPrint type:

# python setup.py build
# python setup.py install

This installs FingerPrint in your Python environment. You might need writing privilege on system directories for such installation.

The installation will deploy:

• a bunch of python source files inside the FingerPrint python module

• a command line python script called fingerprint, inside one of your PATH directories

Use

To get some help on the command line you can type:

# fingerprint -h

Basically there are four main actions fingerprint can do (-c create, -d display, -q query, and -y verify):

1. Create a swirl from a set of input file (flag -c) or with dynamic tracing. In this mode fingerprint will scan the list of files passed on the command line or it will (-x) trace the execution of the command specified to output a swirl file containing the dependencies fingerprint of the given input. This mode can also create a “swirl archive” (-r) which is nothing else than a tar.gz containing the swirl and all the file referenced by it. Using the create flag it is also possible to create a Rocks Cluster roll (flag -m), which will install the software described in the given “swirl archive” on all the nodes of a rocks cluster.

2. Display the content of a swirl file (flag -d). In this mode fingerprint will print to stdout a detailed description of the input swirl. The input swirl can be specified with -f, or it will be the default output.swirl.

3. Query the content of a swirl file (flag -q). In this mode fingerprint will run a query against the specified swirl file and return 0 upon success or 1 when failing. If the query is run with the verbose flag (-v) it will also print to stdout more information regarding the query.

4. Verify a swirl (flag -y). In this mode fingerprint scan the current system for the dependencies listed in the input swirl and return 0 if they were all found or 1 if some of then are unavailable. If verbose flag is given it will print also a list of unmet dependencies. Above the verify it is also possible to perform an integrity check. In this mode fingerprint scans the system where invoked and checks if any of the dependencies listed in the input swirl have been modified since its creation (to this purpose it uses the checksums stored in the swirl). It return 0 upon success or 1 in case of failure, with the verbose flag it prints also a list of modified files.

Examples

Create a fingerprint of your ls command:

clem@sirius:~/projects/FingerPrint/temp$ fingerprint -c /bin/ls
File output.swirl saved

By default it uses output.swirl as input or output Siwrl file name but you can choose your own file name with “-f”

clem@sirius:~/projects/FingerPrint$ ls -lh output.swirl
-rw-rw-r-- 1 clem clem 2.4K Feb 20 15:51 output.swirl

To see the list of libraries your /bin/ls depends on along with the local package name (this is what is stored in a swirl). You can always use the verbose flag (-v) to create more output.

clem@hermes:~/projects/FingerPrint$ fingerprint -dv
File name:  output.swirl
Swirl 2013-08-23 17:27
 ls.so.conf path list:
  /lib/i386-linux-gnu
  /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
  /usr/local/lib
  /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
  /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
  /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa
  /lib32
  /usr/lib32
 -- File List --
  /bin/ls  - coreutils 8.13-3ubuntu3.2 amd64
    Deps: librt.so.1, ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, libselinux.so.1, libacl.so.1, libc.so.6
    Provs:
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.15.so  - libc6 2.15-0ubuntu10.4 amd64
    -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
      Deps:
      Provs: ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libacl.so.1.1.0  - libacl1 2.2.51-5ubuntu1 amd64
    -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libacl.so.1
      Deps: libattr.so.1, libc.so.6
      Provs: libacl.so.1
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.15.so  - libc6 2.15-0ubuntu10.4 amd64
    -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
      Deps: ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
      Provs: libc.so.6
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt-2.15.so  - libc6 2.15-0ubuntu10.4 amd64
    -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1
      Deps: libpthread.so.0, libc.so.6
      Provs: librt.so.1
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libselinux.so.1  - libselinux1 2.1.0-4.1ubuntu1 amd64
      Deps: ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, libc.so.6, libdl.so.2
      Provs: libselinux.so.1
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libattr.so.1.1.0  - libattr1 1:2.4.46-5ubuntu1 amd64
    -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libattr.so.1
      Deps: libc.so.6
      Provs: libattr.so.1
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread-2.15.so  - libc6 2.15-0ubuntu10.4 amd64
    -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0
      Deps: ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, libc.so.6
      Provs: libpthread.so.0
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.15.so  - libc6 2.15-0ubuntu10.4 amd64
    -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2
      Deps: ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, libc.so.6
      Provs: libdl.so.2

Scan the current system to verify compatibility with given swirl i.e. all dependencies listed in the Swirl can be found:

clem@sirius:~/projects/FingerPrint$ fingerprint -y

Verify that none of the dependencies have been modified (it uses md5sum to check for changes).

clem@sirius:~/projects/FingerPrint$ fingerprint -yi

You can query the swirl:

clem@sirius:~/projects/FingerPrint$ fingerprint -q -S
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 && echo librt is used
librt is used

clem@sirius:~/projects/FingerPrint$ fingerprint -q -v -S
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt.so.1 || echo libcrypt is not used
libcrypt is not used

Dynamic tracing

FingerPrint can dynamically trace a running process to properly detect dynamic dependencies and opened files. To this extent it uses the POSIX ptrace system call and it can trace spawned processes as well.

Dynamic tracing can trace dynamically loaded shared libraries and opened files. If FingerPrint is compiled with stacktracer support (see Requirements for more info) it can also detect which shared library initiated the open syscall. To dynamically trace a program run FingperPrint with the ‘-c -x’ flags:

clem@hermes:~/projects/FingerPrint$ fingerprint -c -x "xeyes"
Tracing terminated successfully
File output.swirl saved

When displaying a Swirl created with the dynamic tracing it includes information regarding open files and dynamically loaded libraries.

clem@hermes:~/projects/FingerPrint$ fingerprint -d
File name:  output.swirl
Swirl 2013-08-23 17:43
 -- File List --
  /usr/bin/xeyes
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.15.so
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.15.so
      Opened files:
        /proc/meminfo
        /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm-2.15.so
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6.3.0
      Opened files:
        /usr/share/X11/locale/C/XLC_LOCALE
        /usr/share/X11/locale/locale.dir
        /usr/share/X11/locale/locale.alias
        /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/XLC_LOCALE
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6.4.0
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXmu.so.6.2.0
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrender.so.1.3.0
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXt.so.6.0.0
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.15.so
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1.1.0
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libICE.so.6.3.0
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libSM.so.6.0.1
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6.0.0
      Opened files:
        /home/clem/.Xauthority
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdmcp.so.6.0.0
    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1.3.0
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXcursor.so.1.0.2 --(Dyn)--
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXfixes.so.3.1.0 --(Dyn)--

It the example above, thanks to the stack tracing facility, it is possible to see that the file /home/clem/.Xauthority was opened by the /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6.0.0 shared library.

Authors and Contributors

Fingerprint is an idea of Phil Papadopoulos and it is developed by Phil and Luca Clementi. This work is funded by NSF under the grant #1148473.

Support or Contact

If you are having trouble with FingerPrint or if you need some help you can post an issue or contact me at clem at sdsc dot edu.