How to save output of SQL query fired from Osquery to a file

Question

I have installed Osquery utility on my machine. When I fire an SQL command, it gives output to STDOUT. Is there any way to redirect that output to a file?

$ sudo osqueryi 
I0314 10:57:51.644351  3958 database.cpp:563] Checking database version for migration
I0314 10:57:51.644912  3958 database.cpp:587] Performing migration: 0 -> 1
I0314 10:57:51.645279  3958 database.cpp:619] Migration 0 -> 1 successfully completed!
I0314 10:57:51.645627  3958 database.cpp:587] Performing migration: 1 -> 2
I0314 10:57:51.646088  3958 database.cpp:619] Migration 1 -> 2 successfully completed!
Using a virtual database. Need help, type '.help'
osquery> 
osquery> 
osquery> SELECT * from memory_info;
+--------------+-------------+----------+----------+-------------+-----------+----------+------------+-----------+
| memory_total | memory_free | buffers  | cached   | swap_cached | active    | inactive | swap_total | swap_free |
+--------------+-------------+----------+----------+-------------+-----------+----------+------------+-----------+
| 513617920    | 270921728   | 15110144 | 99860480 | 0           | 145080320 | 59494400 | 0          | 0         |
+--------------+-------------+----------+----------+-------------+-----------+----------+------------+-----------+
osquery>

I want this output in a file. I checked Osquery official documentation. But it hasn't been helpful to solve this particular problem. https://osquery.readthedocs.io/en/stable/introduction/sql/#sql-as-understood-by-osquery

Does running `.help` give you any ideas? – Shawn Mar 14 '19 at 11:33 — Shawn, Mar 14 '19 at 11:33

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 15 '19 at 18:59

You can use the redirection facilities of your shell:

$ osqueryi --json 'select * from osquery_info' > res.json
$ cat res.json
[
  {"build_distro":"10.12","build_platform":"darwin","config_hash":"e7c68185a7252c23585d53d04ecefb77b3ebf99c","config_valid":"1","extensions":"inactive","instance_id":"38201952-9a75-41dc-b2f8-188c2119cda1","pid":"26255","start_time":"1552676034","uuid":"4740D59F-699E-5B29-960B-979AAF9BBEEB","version":"3.3.0","watcher":"-1"}
]

Note that in this example we use JSON output. There are other options available: --csv, --line, --list.

As seph explained in https://stackoverflow.com/a/55164199/491710, it is a common use-case to schedule queries in osqueryd and push the results into a logging pipeline.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 14 '19 at 13:48

osqueryi is generally for interactive use. When saving to files, or having osquery part of a data pipeline, people usually configure scheduled queries with osqueryd.

https://osquery.readthedocs.io/en/stable/deployment/configuration/ has some pretty simple examples of a configuration.

You could also specify the query on the command line, and then do whatever you're doing in the shell.

How to save output of SQL query fired from Osquery to a file

2 Answers2