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Version: VAST v3.1

Linux

Use our pre-built build packages or build from source to install VAST on any Linux distribution. This package is relocatable, which means you can extract it in any filesystem location and it will work.

To deploy VAST as system service, you can use our systemd configuration.

systemd​

The VAST package bundles a systemd service unit under <extraction_path>/lib/systemd/system/vast.service. The service is sandboxed and runs with limited privileges.

Prepare the host system​

Please note that all subsequent commands require root privileges. The service requires a user and group called vast. You can create them as follows.

useradd --system --user-group vast

Make sure that you don't grant any special rights to this user, e.g., do not enable sudo or other privileged commands. Once the user exists, you should create the directory for VAST's persistent data and change the permissions such that it is owned by the new vast user:

mkdir -p /var/lib/vast
chown -R vast:vast /var/lib/vast

Configure the unit​

Before you begin, find the lines beginning with ExecStart= and ExecStop= at the very bottom of the [Service] section in the unit file. Depending on your installation path you might need to change the location of the vast binary.

ExecStart=/path/to/vast start

In case your VAST deployment needs elevated privileges, e.g., to capture packets, you can provide them as follows:

CapabilityBoundingSet=CAP_NET_RAW
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_RAW

Then link the unit file to your systemd search path:

systemctl link vast.service

To have the service start up automatically on system boot, enable it via systemd. Otherwise, just start it to run it immediately.

systemctl enable vast
systemctl start vast

Distribution Support​

Debian​

We provide pre-built packages for Debian and Debian-derived distributions. After downloading, install VAST using dpkg:

dpkg -i vast-${version}_amd64.deb

The Debian package automatically creates a vast system user and installs the systemd server service.

Community contributions wanted!

We are striving to bring VAST into the package managers of all major Linux distributions. Unfortunately we can do so only at a best-effort basis, but we much appreciate community contributions.