Quick Local Docker Install

Discover and experiment with Tetragon on your local Linux host

Start Tetragon

The easiest way to start experimenting with Tetragon is to run it via Docker using the released container images.

docker run -d --name tetragon --rm --pull always \
    --pid=host --cgroupns=host --privileged             \
    -v /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux:/var/lib/tetragon/btf    \
    quay.io/cilium/tetragon:v1.2.0

This will start Tetragon in a privileged container running in the background. Running Tetragon as a privileged container is required to load and attach BPF programs. See the Installation and Configuration section for more details.

Run demo application

To explore Tetragon it is helpful to have a sample workload. You can use Cilium’s demo application with this Docker Compose file, but any workload would work equally well:

curl -LO https://github.com/cilium/tetragon/raw/main/examples/quickstart/docker-compose.yaml
docker compose -f docker-compose.yaml up -d

You can use docker container ls to verify that the containers are up and running. It might take a short amount of time for the container images to download.

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                             COMMAND                  CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                   NAMES
cace79752d94   quay.io/cilium/json-mock:v1.3.8   "bash /run.sh"           34 seconds ago   Up 33 seconds                                           starwars-xwing-1
4f8422b43b5b   quay.io/cilium/json-mock:v1.3.8   "bash /run.sh"           34 seconds ago   Up 33 seconds                                           starwars-tiefighter-1
7b60618ca8bd   quay.io/cilium/starwars:v2.1      "/starwars-docker --…"   34 seconds ago   Up 33 seconds   0.0.0.0:8080->80/tcp, :::8080->80/tcp   starwars-deathstar-1

What’s next

Check for execution events.