Installation

criu is an utility to checkpoint/restore a process tree. This page describes how to manually build and install prerequisites and the tool itself.

Note: Most probably you don't need manual installation, but rather Packages for your distro.

Obtaining CRIU Source

You can download the source code as a release tarball or sync the git repository.

Tarball:	criu-4.0.tar.gz
Version:	4.0 "CRIUDA"
Released:	20 Sep 2024
GIT tag:	v4.0

git clone git://git.criu.org/criu.git
cd criu

Dependencies

Compiler and C Library

For native compilation on Debian based systems, install the build-essential package. For cross compiling for ARM and AArch64, the Linaro prebuilt toolchains are a good choice. Installing them is described below. They are ia32 architecture binaries. On a modern Debian based x86_64 you will need to install the lib32stdc++6 and lib32z1 packages.

mkdir -p deps/`uname -m`-linux-gnu
cd deps
wget http://releases.linaro.org/14.09/components/toolchain/binaries/gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-4.9-2014.09_linux.tar.xz
tar --strip=1 -C `uname -m`-linux-gnu -xf gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-4.9-2014.06_linux.tar.xz
wget http://releases.linaro.org/14.09/components/toolchain/binaries/gcc-linaro-aarch64-linux-gnu-4.9-2014.09_linux.tar.xz
tar --strip=1 -C `uname -m`-linux-gnu -xf gcc-linaro-aarch64-linux-gnu-4.9-2014.06-02_linux.tar.xz
cd ..

Protocol Buffers with C Bindings

CRIU uses the C language bindings of Google Protocol Buffers for serialization. The protoc tool is required at build time and libprotobuf-c.so is required at build time and at run time, assuming dynamic linking.

Distribution Packages

The easiest approach for most would be to install distribution packages. RPM package names: protobuf-c-compiler, protobuf-c-devel. Debian package names: protobuf-c-compiler, libprotobuf-c0-dev.

Building Protocol Buffers From Source

If you would like to build from source, you can use the following commands to obtain the source code repositories, configure, and build the code. On a Debian based system, you may have to install the following packages first: autoconf curl g++ libtool.

Native protobuf

cd deps
git clone https://github.com/google/protobuf.git protobuf
cd protobuf
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu
make
make install
cd ../..

Native protobuf-c

cd deps
git clone https://github.com/protobuf-c/protobuf-c.git protobuf-c
cd protobuf-c
./autogen.sh
mkdir ../pbc-`uname -m`
cd ../pbc-`uname -m`
../protobuf-c/configure --prefix=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu \
  PKG_CONFIG_PATH=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/lib/pkgconfig
make
make install
cd ../..

Cross Compiling for ARMv7

If you would like to cross-compile for armv7:

cd deps
mkdir -p pbc-arm
cd pbc-arm
../protobuf-c/configure --host=arm-linux-gnueabihf --prefix=`pwd`/../arm-linux-gnueabihf --disable-protoc PATH=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH
make PATH=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH
make install PATH=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH
cd ../..

Cross Compiling for ARMv8

If you would like to cross-compile for armv8:

cd deps
mkdir -p pbc-aarch64
cd pbc-aarch64
 ../protobuf-c/configure --host=aarch64-linux-gnu --prefix=`pwd`/../aarch64-linux-gnu --disable-protoc PATH=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH
make PATH=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH
make install PATH=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH
cd ../..

Some minor, but useful dependencies

libbsd

If libbsd is available, CRIU will be compiled with setproctitle() support. It allows to make process titles of service workers to be more verbose.

Building CRIU From Source

Native Compilation

With the CRIU source obtained in the first step and dependencies satisfied in the second step, we are now compile CRIU. For native compilation with the dependencies met using distribution packages, simply run make in the CRIU source directory.

Here is an example of building natively specifying manually built dependencies.

cd deps
rsync -a --exclude=.git --exclude=deps .. criu-`uname -m`
cd criu-`uname -m`
make \
  USERCFLAGS="-I`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/include -L`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/lib" \
  PATH="`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH"
sudo LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/lib ./criu check
cd ../..

Cross Compilation for ARMv7

cd deps
rsync -a --exclude=.git --exclude=deps .. criu-arm
cd criu-arm
make \
  ARCH=arm \
  CROSS_COMPILE=`pwd`/../bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf- \
  USERCFLAGS="-I`pwd`/../arm-linux-gnueabihf/include -L`pwd`/../arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib" \
  PATH="`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH"
cd ../..

Cross Compilation for ARMv8

 cd deps
 rsync -a --exclude=.git --exclude=deps .. criu-aarch64
 cd criu-aarch64
 make \
  ARCH=aarch64 \
  CROSS_COMPILE=`pwd`/../bin/aarch64-linux-gnu- \
  USERCFLAGS="-I`pwd`/../aarch64-linux-gnu/include -L`pwd`/../aarch64-linux-gnu/lib" \
  PATH="`pwd`/../`uname -m`-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH"
 cd ../..

Linux Kernel

Linux kernel v3.11 or newer is required, with some specific options set. If your distribution does not provide needed kernel, you might want to compile one yourself. Note we also have our custom kernel, which might contain some experimental CRIU related patches.

Note you might have to enable

CONFIG_EXPERT

General setup -> Configure standard kernel features (expert users)

option, which depends on

CONFIG_EMBEDDED

General setup -> Embedded system

(welcome to Kconfig reverse chains hell).

The following options must be enabled for CRIU to work:

CONFIG_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE

General setup -> Checkpoint/restore support

CONFIG_NAMESPACES

General setup -> Namespaces support

CONFIG_UTS_NS

General setup -> Namespaces support -> UTS namespace

CONFIG_IPC_NS

General setup -> Namespaces support -> IPC namespace

CONFIG_PID_NS

General setup -> Namespaces support -> PID namespaces

CONFIG_NET_NS

General setup -> Namespaces support -> Network namespace

CONFIG_FHANDLE

General setup -> open by fhandle syscalls

CONFIG_EVENTFD

General setup -> Enable eventfd() system call

CONFIG_EPOLL

General setup -> Enable eventpoll support

CONFIG_INOTIFY_USER

File systems -> Inotify support for userspace

CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION

Executable file formats -> Emulations -> IA32 Emulation

CONFIG_UNIX_DIAG

Networking support -> Networking options -> Unix domain sockets -> UNIX: socket monitoring interface

CONFIG_INET_DIAG

Networking support -> Networking options -> TCP/IP networking -> INET: socket monitoring interface

CONFIG_INET_UDP_DIAG

Networking support -> Networking options -> TCP/IP networking -> INET: socket monitoring interface -> UDP: socket monitoring interface

CONFIG_PACKET_DIAG

Networking support -> Networking options -> Packet socket -> Packet: sockets monitoring interface

CONFIG_NETLINK_DIAG

Networking support -> Networking options -> Netlink socket -> Netlink: sockets monitoring interface

For some usage scenarios there is an ability to track memory changes and produce incremental dumps. Need to enable

CONFIG_MEM_SOFT_DIRTY

Processor type and features -> Track memory changes

At the moment it's known that CRIU will NOT work if packet generator module is loaded. Thus make sure that either module is unloaded or not compiled at all.

CONFIG_NET_PKTGEN

Networking support -> Networking options -> Network testing -> Packet generator

iproute2

The iproute2 tool version 3.5.0 or higher is needed for dumping network namespaces. The latest one can be cloned from iproute2. It should be compiled and a path to ip written in the environment variable CR_IP_TOOL.

Checking That It Works

First thing to do is to run

# criu check --ms

At the end it should say "Looks OK", if it doesn't the messages on the screen explain what functionality is missing. If you're using our custom kernel, then the --ms option should not be used, in this case CRIU would check for all the kernel features to work.

You can then try running the ZDTM Test Suite which sits in the tests/zdtm/ directory.

There's a known issue with BTRFS spoiling dev_t values for files and sockets! Not all tests will work on it.

Using CR tools

Please see Usage and Advanced usage, as well as Category:HOWTO.