Using trace tcp

The trace tcp gadget can be used to monitor tcp connections, as it shows connect, accept and close events related to TCP connections.

On Kubernetes

First, we need to create one pod:

$ kubectl run bb --image busybox:latest sleep inf
pod/bb created

You can now use the gadget, but output will be empty:

$ kubectl gadget trace tcp
K8S.NODE            K8S.NAMESPACE       K8S.PODNAME         K8S.CONTAINERNAME   T PID        COMM       IP SRC                DST

Indeed, it is waiting for TCP connection to be established in the default namespace (you can use -A to monitor all namespaces and then be sure to not miss any event). So, in another terminal, exec a container and run this wget:

$ kubectl exec -ti bb -- wget https://www.kinvolk.io
Connecting to www.kinvolk.io (188.114.96.3:443)
wget: note: TLS certificate validation not implemented
saving to 'index.html'
index.html           100% |************************************************************************************************| 47748  0:00:00 ETA
'index.html' saved

Go back to the first terminal and see:

K8S.NODE            K8S.NAMESPACE       K8S.PODNAME         K8S.CONTAINERNAME   T PID        COMM       IP SRC                DST
minikube-docker     default             bb                  bb                  C 253124     wget       4  p/default/bb:50192 o/188.114.96.3:443

The printed lines correspond to TCP connection established with the socket. Here is the full legend of all the fields:

• T: How the TCP connection was established, it can be one of the following values:
  • C: The TCP connection was established after a connect() system call.
  • A: The TCP connection was established after an accept() system call.
  • X: The TCP connection was closed following the close() system call.
  • U: The TCP connection was either established or closed following an unknown reason.
• PID: The PID which established the TCP connection.
• COMM: The command corresponding to the PID.
• IP: The IP version (either 4 or 6).
• SRC: The source IP address, pod namespace + pod name or service name together with the port
• DST: The destination IP address, pod namespace + pod name or service name together with the port

So, the above line should be read like this: "Command wget, with PID 253124, established a TCP connection through IP version 4, using the connect() system call, from the busybox container on port 50192 towards address 188.114.96.3 and port 433"

Note that, IP 188.114.96.3 corresponds to kinvolk.io while port 443 is the port generally used for HTTPS.

Clean everything

Congratulations! You reached the end of this guide! You can now delete the resource we created:

$ kubectl delete pod busybox
pod "busybox" deleted

With ig

With the following container we can see that the gadget shows that a TCP connection was established.

Start the gadget:

$ sudo ig trace tcp -c test-trace-tcp

Then, run a container that creates a TCP connection.

$ docker run -it --rm --name test-trace-tcp busybox /bin/sh -c "wget https://www.example.com"
Connecting to www.example.com (93.184.216.34:443)
wget: note: TLS certificate validation not implemented
saving to 'index.html'
index.html           100% |********************************|  1256  0:00:00 ETA
'index.html' saved

The gadget will print that connection on the first terminal

$ sudo ig trace tcp -c test-trace-tcp
RUNTIME.CONTAINERNAME     T PID        COMM          IP SRC                      DST
test-trace-tcp            C 269349     wget          4  172.17.0.2:46502         93.184.216.34:443