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System State

The System State Source collects snapshots of the host system’s current state, on a configurable schedule, and sends them out as events to downstream systems for operational and security analytics.

Type: System and Internal | TLS Support: N/A | Event Breaker Support: No

Cribl Stream supports configuring only one System State Source per Worker Node and per Worker Group. This Source is currently unavailable on Cribl-managed Cribl.Cloud Workers.

Configuring Cribl Stream to Collect System State Events
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From the top nav, click Manage, then select a Fleet to configure. Then, you have two options:

To configure via the graphical QuickConnect UI, click Routing > QuickConnect (Stream) or Collect (Edge). Next, click Add Source at left. From the resulting drawer’s tiles, select [System and Internal >] System State. By default, a System State tile appears at left. Hover over it and select Configure to open a drawer that provides the options below.

Or, to configure via the Routing UI, click Data > Sources (Stream) or More > Sources (Edge). From the resulting page’s tiles or left nav, select [System and Internal >] System State. Next, click the default in_system_state Source to open modal that provides the options below.

General Settings
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Input ID: This is prefilled with the default value in_system_state, which cannot be changed via the UI, due to the single‑Source restrictions above.

Optional Settings
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Polling interval: How often, in seconds, to collect system state events. If not specified, defaults to 300s.

Each run of the state collector generates events with identical _time values.

Tags: Optionally, add tags that you can use for filtering and grouping in Cribl Stream. Use a tab or hard return between (arbitrary) tag names.

Collector Settings
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Cribl Stream contains the following System State collectors:

Host Info
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With the Enabled slider on (the default), Cribl Stream will create events based on entries collected from the hosts file.

A partial list of Host Info events includes:

  • host
  • timestamp
  • cribl.version
  • cribl.mode
  • cribl.group
  • cribl.config_version
  • os.arch
  • os.cpu_count

See the Explore > System State > Host Info UI for a full list of events.

DNS
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With the Enabled slider on (the default), Cribl Stream will create events for DNS resolvers and search entries. The event field mapping depends on the operating system.

Linux
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Cribl Stream emits events with the following fields:

Event FieldDescription
nameServerName server entries from the file
searchSearch entries from the file
sourceThe source of the data used to populate the event
Windows
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Cribl Stream emits events with the following fields:

Event FieldDescription
ifAliasInterface alias name (if present)
ifIndexInterface index (if present)
addressFamilyIPv4 IPv6
nameServerArray of name servers
searchArray of search suffixes
sourceThe source of the data used to populate the event

Disks and File Systems
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With the Enabled slider on (the default), Cribl Stream will collect entries on physical disks, partitions, and mounted filesystems. These entries can help you monitor drive status, including available space, percent utilization, inode availability, wait times, and number of blocks free.

This option is available for Windows and Linux Worker Groups, but you must create a different Worker Group for each OS. Follow this procedure:

  1. Create a Worker Group for the appropriate OS.
  2. Modify the Worker Group by disabling or removing the pre-defined Sources that do not apply to the OS. Remove Windows Event Forwarder or Windows Event Logs and Windows Metrics from Linux Worker Groups, and remove Linux-specific Sources from Windows Worker Groups.
  3. Modify the Worker Group mapping to filter by platform – platform=='win32' for Windows or platform=='linux' for Linux.
  4. Deploy Cribl Stream Worker Nodes and verify that the mapping is correct.

If you are using the free version of Cribl Stream, you will only get a single default Worker Group. If you need more than one Worker Group, you’ll have to limit your Cribl Stream deployment to one OS or upgrade to Cribl Stream Enterprise.

For each physical disk, Cribl Stream will collect:

  • name
  • size (in blocks)
  • blockSize (in bytes)
  • model
  • serial
  • firmware
  • partitions (count)
  • interface type

For each partition on a physical disk, Cribl Stream will collect:

  • disk (name)
  • disk ID (number)
  • type (primary or logical)
  • label
  • offset
  • size (in blocks)
  • blockSize (in bytes)
  • filesystem (mountpoint)

For each mounted filesystem, Cribl Stream will collect:

  • mountpoint (path)
  • disk (name)
  • partition (ID)
  • filesystem type
  • size (in blocks)
  • blockSize (in bytes)
  • blocksFree
  • inodes
  • inodesFree
  • flags

Hosts File
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With the Enabled slider on (the default), Cribl Stream will collect entries from the hosts file and emit them as events.

Examples of entries in the hosts file are:

  • ip – IP address of the host.
  • hostnames – list of hostnames per IP address.

Interfaces
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With the Enabled slider on (the default), Cribl Stream will create events for each of the host’s network interfaces.

Cribl Stream will create separate events for each entry. All events will have identical timestamp values.

Linux IPV4/IPV6
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On Linux, Cribl Stream creates interface events with the following fields:

  • ifIndex: Interface index identification numbers.
  • ifName: The name of the network interface.
  • flags: Flags.
  • mtu: Maximum transmission unit (MTU) in bytes for packets sent on this interface.
  • operstate: Operational State.
  • linkType: Physical link type.
  • macAddress: Media Access Control address.
  • broadcast Broadcast address.
  • addrInfo: Array of {family, ipAddress, mask, prefix}.
Windows: IPV4/IPV6
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On Windows, Cribl Stream creates interface events with the following fields:

  • ifIndex: Interface index identification numbers.
  • interface: The name of the network interface.
  • mtu: Maximum transmission unit (MTU) in bytes for packets sent on this interface.
  • flags: Flags.
  • macAddress: Media Access Control address.
  • addrInfo: Array of {family, ipAddress, mask, prefix}.

Routes
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With the Enabled slider on (the default), Cribl Stream will collect entries from host’s network routes and emit them as events.

Sample entries include:

  • address_family– ipv4 or ipv6
  • destination – The destination network or host.
  • prefix – Emits only from Linux IPV6.
  • flags– Flags
  • gateway–The gateway address
  • interface – Interface to which packets for this route will be sent.
  • ifIndex – Interface ID. Emits only from Windows.
  • mask– The netmask for the destination net. Emits only from Linux IPV4.
  • metric– The distance to the target.
  • sequence – Sequence number in the table.
  • source – The source of the data used to populate the event.

Users and Groups
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With the Enabled slider on (the default), Cribl Stream will create events for users and groups.

Linux
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On Linux, Cribl Stream creates user events with the following fields:

  • username
  • fullname
  • loginShell
  • userHome
  • userid
  • primaryGroup (name of primary group, not group ID)
  • groups (list of group names)

Cribl Stream also creates group events with the following fields:

  • name
  • groupId
  • users
Windows
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On Windows, Cribl Stream creates user events with the following fields:

  • userName
  • fullname
  • description
  • groups

Cribl Stream also creates group events with the following fields:

  • name
  • description
  • users

Processing Settings
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Fields
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In this section, you can add Fields to each event using Eval-like functionality.

Name: Field name.

Value: JavaScript expression to compute field’s value, enclosed in quotes or backticks. (Can evaluate to a constant.)

Pre-Processing
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Select a Pipeline (or Pack) from the drop-down to process this Source’s data. Required to configure this Source via Data Routes; optional to configure via Collect/QuickConnect.

Disk Spooling
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Enable disk spooling: Whether to save metrics to disk. When set to Yes, exposes this section’s remaining fields.

Bucket time span: The amount of time that data is held in each bucket before it’s written to disk. The default is 10 minutes (10m).

Max data size: Maximum disk space the persistent metrics can consume. Once reached, Cribl Stream will delete older data. Example values: 420 MB, 4 GB. Default value: 100 MB.

Max data age: How long to retain data. Once reached, Cribl Stream will delete older data. Example values: 2h, 4d. Default value: 24h (24 hours).

Compression: Currently locked to none. Cribl plans to add (optional) disk-spooling compression in a future release.

Path location: Path to write metrics to. Default value is $CRIBL_HOME/state/system_state.

Advanced Settings
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Environment: If you’re using GitOps, optionally use this field to specify a single Git branch on which to enable this configuration. If empty, the config will be enabled everywhere.

Connected Destinations
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Select Send to Routes to enable conditional routing, filtering, and cloning of this Source’s data via the Routing table.

Select QuickConnect to send this Source’s data to one or more Destinations via independent, direct connections.