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INSTALL.md

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INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR OPENVAS

Please note: The reference system used by most of the developers is Debian Stable. The build might fail on any other system. Also, it is necessary to install dependent development packages.

Prerequisites for openvas

Prerequisites:

  • a C compiler (e.g. gcc)
  • cmake >= 3.0
  • libgvm_base, libgvm_util >= 22.4
  • glib-2.0 >= 2.42
  • gio-2.0
  • json-glib-1.0 >= 1.4.4
  • bison
  • flex
  • libgcrypt >= 1.6
  • pkg-config
  • libpcap
  • libgpgme >= 1.1.2
  • redis >= 5.0.3
  • libssh >= 0.6.0
  • libksba >= 1.0.7
  • libgnutls >= 3.6.4
  • libcurl4-gnutls-dev
  • libbsd

Prerequisites for building documentation:

  • Doxygen
  • pandoc (optional, for building manual and man pages for NASL built-in functions)

Prerequisites for building tests:

  • Cgreen (optional, for building tests)

Recommended to have WMI support:

  • openvas-smb >= 1.0.1

Recommended for extended Windows support (e.g. automatically start the remote registry service):

  • impacket-wmiexec of python-impacket >= 0.9.15 found within your PATH

Recommended to have improved SNMP support:

  • netsnmp libraries or alternatively the snmpget binary.
  • snmp client

Recommended for port scanning and service detection based on nmap.

  • nmap

Recommended for port scanning based on pnscan.

  • pnscan

Install prerequisites on Debian GNU/Linux 'Bullseye' 11:

apt-get install gcc pkg-config libssh-gcrypt-dev libgnutls28-dev \
libglib2.0-dev libjson-glib-dev libpcap-dev libgpgme-dev bison libksba-dev \
libsnmp-dev libgcrypt20-dev redis-server libbsd-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev

Compiling openvas

If you have installed required libraries to a non-standard location, remember to set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable to the location of you pkg-config files before configuring:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/your/location/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH

Create a build directory and change into it with:

mkdir build
cd build

Then configure the build with:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/path/to/your/installation ..

Or (if you want to use the default installation path /usr/local):

cmake ..

This only needs to be done once.

Other cmake variables need to be adjusted as well if you want to have all files in CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX or in the default installation path /usr/local. They can be added to the cmake call with -D<var_name>=<install_prefix><default_value>.

Variable Default
SYSCONFDIR /etc
LOCALSTATEDIR /var
OPENVAS_FEED_LOCK_PATH /var/lib/openvas/feed-update.lock
OPENVAS_RUN_DIR /run/ospd

Thereafter, the following commands are useful:

make                # build the scanner
make doxygen        # build the documentation
make doxygen-full   # build more developer-oriented documentation
make doxygen-xml    # build the documentation (XML)
make manual         # build a HTML manual
make nasl-man       # build man pages for NASL built-in functions
make tests          # build tests
make install        # install the build
make rebuild_cache  # rebuild the cmake cache

Please note that you may have to execute make install as root, especially if you have specified a prefix for which your user does not have full permissions.

To clean up the build environment, simply remove the contents of the build directory you created above.

Configuration Options

During compilation, the build process uses a set of compiler options which enable very strict error checking and asks the compiler to abort should it detect any errors in the code. This is to ensure a maximum of code quality and security.

Some (especially newer) compilers can be stricter than others when it comes to error checking. While this is a good thing and the developers aim to address all compiler warnings, it may lead the build process to abort on your system.

Should you notice error messages causing your build process to abort, do not hesitate to contact the developers by creating a new issue report. Don't forget to include the name and version of your compiler and distribution in your message.

Setting up openvas

Setting up an openvas requires the following steps:

  1. (optional) You may decide to change the default scanner preferences by setting them in the file /etc/openvas/openvas.conf or <SYSCONFDIR>/openvas/openvas.conf when SYSCONFDIR was set via the cmake call. If that file does not exist (default), then the default settings are used. You can view them with openvas -s. The output of that command is a valid configuration file. The man page (man openvas) provides details about the available settings, among these opportunities to restrict access of scanner regarding scan targets and interfaces.

  2. In order to run vulnerability scans, you will need a collection of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs) that can be run by openvas. Initially, your NVT collection will be empty. It is recommended that you synchronize with an NVT feed service before starting openvas for the first time.

    Use greenbone-feed-sync to synchronize the feed. It can be used to synchronize with the community feed, as well as with the enterprise feed. Look into it for more information.

    NVT feeds are updated on a regular basis. Be sure to update your NVT collection regularly to detect the latest threats.

  3. The scanner needs a running Redis server to temporarily store information gathered on the scanned hosts. Redis 3.2 and newer are supported. See doc/redis_config.txt to see how to set up and run a Redis server.

    The easiest and most reliable way to start redis under Ubuntu and Debian is to use systemd.

    sudo cp config/redis-openvas.conf /etc/redis/
sudo chown redis:redis /etc/redis/redis-openvas.conf
sudo echo "db_address = /run/redis-openvas/redis.sock" > /etc/openvas/openvas.conf # Or append to <SYSCONFDIR>/openvas/openvas.conf when SYSCONFDIR was set via the cmake call.
sudo systemctl start [email protected]

  4. The Greenbone Vulnerability Management service (gvmd) acts as OSP client to connect to and control scanners. openvas does not act as a OSP service - you need the OSPD-OpenVAS module for this. The actual user interfaces (for example GSA or GVM-Tools) will only interact with gvmd and/or ospd-openvas, not the scanner. You can launch openvas to upload the plugins in redis using the following command:

    openvas -u

    but ospd-openvas will do the update automatically.

  5. Please note that although you can run openvas as a user without elevated privileges, it is recommended that you start openvas as root since a number of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs) require root privileges to perform certain operations like packet forgery. If you run openvas as a user without permission to perform these operations, your scan results are likely to be incomplete.

    As openvas will be launched from an ospd-openvas process with sudo, the next configuration is required in the sudoers file:

    sudo visudo

    add this line to allow the user running ospd-openvas, to launch openvas with root permissions

    <user> ALL = NOPASSWD: <install prefix>/sbin/openvas

    If you set an install prefix, you have to update the path in the sudoers file too:

    Defaults        secure_path=<existing paths...>:<install prefix>/sbin

Logging Configuration

If you encounter problems, by default the scanner writes logs to the file

/var/log/gvm/openvas.log

When LOCALSTATEDIR was set via the cmake call the scanner writes logs to the file

<LOCALSTATEDIR>/log/gvm/openvas.log

It may contain useful information.The exact location of this file may differ depending on your distribution and installation method. Please have this file ready when contacting the GVM developers via the Greenbone Community Portal or submitting bug reports at https://github.com/greenbone/openvas/issues as they may help to pinpoint the source of your issue.

Logging is configured via the file at default location

/etc/openvas/openvas_log.conf

When SYSCONFDIR was set via the cmake call the file is located at

<SYSCONFDIR>/openvas/openvas_log.conf

The configuration is divided into domains like this one

[sd   main]
prepend=%t %p
prepend_time_format=%Y-%m-%d %Hh%M.%S %Z
file=/var/log/gvm/openvas.log
level=128

The level field controls the amount of logging that is written. The value of level can be

  4  Errors.
  8  Critical situation.
 16  Warnings.
 32  Messages.
 64  Information.
128  Debug.  (Lots of output.)

Enabling any level includes all the levels above it. So enabling Information will include Warnings, Critical situations and Errors.

To get absolutely all logging, set the level to 128 for all domains in the configuration file.

Logging to syslog can be enabled in each domain like:

[sd   main]
prepend=%t %p
prepend_time_format=%Y-%m-%d %Hh%M.%S %Z
file=syslog
syslog_facility=daemon
level=128

Static code analysis with the Clang Static Analyzer

If you want to use the Clang Static Analyzer (https://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/) to do a static code analysis, you can do so by prefixing the configuration and build commands with scan-build:

scan-build cmake ..
scan-build make

The tool will provide a hint on how to launch a web browser with the results.

It is recommended to do this analysis in a separate, empty build directory and to empty the build directory before scan-build call.