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Parca Agent from Binary

You can download the latest agent binary release for your architecture from our releases page.

curl -sL https://github.com/parca-dev/parca-agent/releases/download/v0.9.1/parca-agent_0.9.1_`uname -s`_`uname -m`.tar.gz | tar xvfz - parca-agent

We also produce Docker images that can be pulled:

docker pull ghcr.io/parca-dev/parca-agent:v0.9.1

To start Parca Agent, run the following command with the flag:

sudo parca-agent --node=systemd-test --systemd-units=docker.service --log-level=debug --kubernetes=false --store-address=localhost:7070 --insecure
info

The Agent needs to run as a privileged user to load necessary eBPF programs to Kernel. Please check our FAQ for further information.

The command in the above configuration targets the Parca server that is presumably running on your system. And it uses the systemd service discovery to find the cgroups that have been running on your system.

caution

Note that Parca Agent's systemd service discovery currently only supports cgroup v1. Make sure your system uses cgroup v1 if you have problems discovering running services.

You should see with some log lines:

ts=2021-09-27T11:24:46.142174407Z caller=main.go:81 msg=starting... node=systemd-test store=localhost:7070
level=debug ts=2021-09-27T11:24:46.142193096Z caller=main.go:82 msg="parca-agent initialized" version= commit= date= builtBy= config="unsupported value type"
level=debug ts=2021-09-27T11:24:46.142326491Z caller=main.go:276 msg="starting systemd manager"
level=debug ts=2021-09-27T11:24:47.143212813Z caller=systemdmanager.go:131 msg="running systemd manager" units=1
level=debug ts=2021-09-27T11:24:47.143340129Z caller=systemdmanager.go:200 systemdunit=docker.service msg="adding systemd unit profiler"
level=debug ts=2021-09-27T11:24:47.143385627Z caller=profile.go:165 systemdunit=docker.service msg="starting cgroup profiler"
level=debug ts=2021-09-27T11:24:48.142750722Z caller=systemdmanager.go:131 msg="running systemd manager" units=1

Now we can view the active profilers by visiting http://localhost:7071:

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Once Parca and Parca Agent are both running, you can navigate to the web interface on the browser. You should shortly see the Select profile... dropdown menu populate with the profiles that Parca is retrieving from itself and receiving from the Agent.

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Selecting parca_agent_cpu_sample_count as profile types and clicking the Search button will retrieve the profiles from Parca Agent for the time selection (default Last Hour).

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