/doca-argus

DOCA Argus Service — Tasks

Where to start: The order is configure → build → modify → run → test → debug. The ## test verb is an iterative loop, not a one-shot pass — see the eval-loop overlay in ## test below. For Argus, build and modify are about deployment configuration (container image selection, mounted config file, forwarder wiring, SIEM-side ingest), not about compiling source.

These verbs cover the in-scope Argus operational workflows for an external operator deploying the Argus container on BlueField. Every step assumes the operator has consulted the live public DOCA Argus Service Guide (reachable through doca-public-knowledge-map ## DOCA services) and is using it as the authoritative reference; this file prescribes the order and what to look up where, not a copy-paste runbook.

configure

Preparing the BlueField, picking the four configuration axes, and planning the end-to-end pipeline (Argus → forwarder → SIEM → ops review) before the container starts.

1. Confirm Argus is actually the right answer. Per the path-selection rule in CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy:
   • Does the user want production runtime security on BlueField as a packaged workflow, with findings flowing into existing SIEM infrastructure? If yes, Argus is the right answer — and specifically, recommend Argus over building from the DOCA App Shield library for this production case. The bundled product is the production default; the library is the right answer only when the user is genuinely building a custom security product of their own.
   • Is the user trying to build a custom DPU-side security tool of their own? That is the DOCA App Shield library — same shape of BlueField-side observation, different shape of operator effort — which is not covered by this bundle (policy-excluded from the public release); route them to the public docs via doca-public-knowledge-map.
   • Does the user actually want observability / metrics rather than security? Route to the DOCA Telemetry Service via doca-public-knowledge-map ## DOCA services.
   • Is there no security-posture concern at all? Stop here honestly — Argus has operational cost (container, sampling CPU, SIEM channel) and deploying it for nothing is not a neutral choice.
2. Confirm the env is healthy. This skill expects DOCA to be installed on the BlueField. If that has not been verified, run doca-setup ## test first. If the user has no install yet, route to doca-setup ## no-install for the public NGC DOCA container path.
3. Decide the four configuration axes. Per the four-axis table in CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes, commit before starting the container to:
   • Detection policy — which classes of anomaly (suspicious activity, integrity violations, operational anomalies) Argus alerts on. Derived from the public Argus Service Guide's detection-policy section against the user's workload pattern. Expect to tune this during the calibration period.
   • Forwarding destination — local logs (smoke only) or a SIEM (Splunk / ELK / Sentinel / generic syslog). The production default is SIEM-forwarded; local-only is for the smoke step in ## test.
   • Sampling / sensitivity — the false-positive vs false-negative trade-off. Production sampling is a different posture from lab sampling; size sampling against the workload's CPU / latency budget, not against the "find everything" instinct.
   • Host coverage — which host targets the deployment monitors (the BlueField itself, the attached host, both, and the documented per-process / per-service scoping if the public guide exposes it for this release).
4. Plan the SIEM-side ingest. Decide where findings land (Splunk / ELK / Sentinel / generic syslog) and confirm the SIEM team is ready to receive them. Capture the SIEM endpoint's hostname, the forwarder protocol the public Argus Service Guide names, and the auth material the forwarder expects. The SIEM-side ingest body itself is the SIEM team's responsibility and lives in the SIEM's own documentation; Argus's contract is to emit findings in the documented format.
5. Plan the calibration period. Before declaring the channel production-ready, the operator should reserve a calibration window (per the calibration-period rule in CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy) to triage initial false positives, tune the detection policy per the public guide, and confirm a steady-state finding baseline. Record the exit criteria before starting: minimum observation window, representative workload phases and smoke events, quantified acceptable finding/false-positive budget, zero missed required smoke detections, no undocumented disables, and the security-ops owner who must sign off. Skipping this step is how a noisy initial channel either floods the SIEM ops queue or trains the team to ignore Argus findings entirely.
6. Author the Argus container config. From the public DOCA Argus Service Guide, derive the config file fragment for the chosen detection policy / forwarder / sampling / host coverage. Quote config keys from the live guide, do NOT infer them from generic security-tooling knowledge or from a previous Argus release. Plan where the config file will live on the BlueField filesystem and what mount path the container expects.

build

Argus is a service shipped as a container, not a library. There is no Argus application artifact for the operator to build — the container ships from NGC and the config is a static file.

If the user is asking how to build a custom DPU-side security tool (a program that reads host state from the BlueField side to make its own decisions), that is not an Argus question — it is the path-selection rule pointing at the DOCA App Shield library, which is not covered by this bundle (policy-excluded from the public release):

• For applications that introspect the host's running kernel state from the DPU side (rootkit detection, periodic process / module / library / thread snapshots, integrity verification), the build is the App Shield library's build — route the user to the public docs via doca-public-knowledge-map and to doca-programming-guide for the canonical build pattern.
• For applications that consume Argus's findings (an internal dashboard, a custom enrichment pipeline that sits between Argus and the SIEM, a hand-written alert correlator), no DOCA-specific build is needed — the application reads the documented forwarder format that Argus emits, against whatever language the consumer is written in. The forwarder format is the public Argus Service Guide's surface, not a DOCA C ABI.

If the user is instead asking how to build the Argus container itself from source, that is not an external-operator workflow — the container ships pre-built from NGC and rebuilding it is out of scope for this skill. Route to the public DOCA Argus Service Guide via doca-public-knowledge-map ## DOCA services.

modify

Argus does not have a "modify a sample" workflow analogous to DOCA libraries; there is no Argus sample program a user starts from. The Argus analog of "modify" is adapt the documented container config recipe to the user's environment and tune the detection policy as the calibration period progresses:

1. Start from the documented recipe. Identify the public guide's recipe that matches the user's deployment posture (the same detector classes, the same forwarder target shape, the same sampling tier). Quote it; do not author a new one from scratch.
2. Diff against the user's environment. Note the specific substitutions the user must make: SIEM endpoint hostname, forwarder auth material, host-coverage scoping (which host targets), sampling tier (production vs lab), config file path, container image tag (always pulled from NGC per the public guide).
3. Apply minimum-change. Change only what the user's environment forces. Every additional deviation from the documented recipe widens the surface for an unintended detection-policy or forwarder mismatch the operator will have to debug later.
4. Re-validate against the four-axis table. Each substitution is a chance to accidentally break one of the four axes (detection policy / forwarding / sampling / host coverage). Walk CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes one row at a time after every substitution.
5. Re-validate against the calibration-period and never-silently-disable rules. Per the safety policy in CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy, any change that turns a detector class off must be explicit, documented, and time-boxed with a re-evaluation date. An undocumented disable is a silent blind spot the next operator will not know about.
6. Re-open the calibration period. Any non-trivial detection policy mutation, sampling change, or host-coverage change re-opens the calibration period — re-run the smoke step in ## test before re-enabling production alerting on the SIEM channel.

The agent's anti-pattern alert: a "copy a generic security agent's config and adapt" is almost always slower than starting from the public Argus Service Guide's recipe, because Argus's config schema is documented per the public guide and is not 1:1 with any other security agent.

run

Bringing up the Argus container and confirming the end-to-end pipeline (Argus → forwarder → SIEM ingest → ops review) is flowing, BEFORE enabling any production alerting on top.

1. Pull the Argus container image from NGC at the tag the public Argus Service Guide names for the operator's DOCA release. Quote the tag from the live guide; do NOT memorize or invent the tag.
2. Start the container per the public Container Deployment Guide pattern. Mount the Argus config file at the path the public Argus Service Guide names. The runtime command shape (e.g. docker run / crictl / BlueField container manager) is documented in the Container Deployment Guide reachable through doca-public-knowledge-map ## DOCA services.
3. Confirm the container is running, not restart-looping. A restart loop is a layer-1 symptom per CAPABILITIES.md ## Error taxonomy (container runtime / image tag / config mount); diagnose it before touching detection policy.
4. Watch the Argus container's logs for the documented startup-banner and detector-activation lines. The container's stdout is the primary operational observability surface. Confirm that the detectors the operator configured are listed as activated; a detector that is silently absent from the activation list will be silently absent from the finding feed.
5. Confirm the forwarder handshake. The container should emit a documented forwarder-handshake line confirming the SIEM endpoint is reachable and authenticated. If it does not, stop and walk CAPABILITIES.md ## Error taxonomy layer 3 before continuing — there is no point in waiting for findings if the forwarder cannot deliver them.
6. Confirm the SIEM-side ingest. The end-to-end pipeline is not "Argus emitted a forwarder packet"; it is "the SIEM dashboard shows the heartbeat / handshake / first event that Argus emitted". Get the SIEM team to confirm receipt before waiting on real findings.
7. Single-event smoke (next: ## test step 1). Before enabling production alerting on the SIEM channel, walk ## test step 1 on a non-production monitored workload: enable the documented Process Created event and start one harmless, pre-approved process. Confirm that exact event traverses the end-to-end pipeline; only then layer production alerting on top.

For the runtime version + container-tag cross-checks that underlie "my Argus behaves differently from what the docs say", see doca-version TASKS.md ## run and apply the container-tag-lags-host-package overlay from CAPABILITIES.md ## Version compatibility.

test

Argus has no "compile and unit-test" workflow — testing is operational and end-to-end.

## test is an iterative loop, not a one-shot pass. Every mutation (detection policy change, forwarder change, sampling change, host-coverage change, SIEM-side ingest change) re-opens the smoke sweep AND re-opens the calibration period. Skipping either is the failure mode this loop replaces.

The eval-loop overlay (rows apply to every Argus deployment, not just one detection policy):

The agent's rule: every mutation re-opens BOTH the smoke sweep AND the calibration period. A configuration change followed by "it probably still works" is exactly the failure mode the iterative loop is here to prevent — and in security tooling, the silent failure mode means the channel goes blind in a way nobody notices until the first real event.

1. End-to-end smoke using a documented event. With Argus running and the forwarder wired, use a non-production monitored workload. Enable the public guide's documented Process Created event, record the local and receiver baselines, then start one harmless, pre-approved process. Confirm in order: (a) Argus container stdout shows the documented startup state with the configured detectors active and the forwarder handshake successful; (b) the corresponding Process Created event for the approved process appears in Argus's local event log; (c) that same event ID appears at the dedicated smoke receiver or tagged, non-alerting SIEM index the security ops team will review. Do not invent a detector, alert, or synthetic-event interface: process creation is the documented source-backed mechanism.
2. Four-axis smoke without disabling detection. Repeat the same release-matched Process Created smoke after each proposed detection-policy, forwarding, sampling, or host-coverage change, one axis at a time, on the non-production workload and smoke destination. Compare the identical local and receiver evidence against the baseline. Where the public guide documents a non-matching benign event, also confirm it does not produce that detector's alert while the container, other enabled detectors, and forwarder remain healthy. Do not deliberately misconfigure or disable an unspecified detector to manufacture a negative case.
3. Forwarder failure smoke (strictly gated). Prefer a dedicated test receiver whose reachability can be interrupted without affecting production. Inject an outage only there, or during an explicit owner-approved maintenance window for the real SIEM endpoint. Never stop or block a shared production SIEM merely for an Argus test. Confirm the documented forwarder error path, restore reachability, and account for queued findings per the public guide. If isolation is impossible, require SIEM-owner approval, a time-boxed maintenance window, production-alert suppression for the test stream, and a data-gap accounting plan; otherwise skip destructive fault injection and escalate to the SIEM owner. This validates the forwarder, not Argus.
4. Calibration-period triage. Run the deployment against the real workload, in a posture where findings flow to a smoke destination (or a tagged SIEM index that the security ops team is NOT yet alerting on). Triage the false-positive stream; tune the detection policy per the public guide; loop until the pre-recorded calibration exit criteria all hold and the security-ops owner signs off. Per the calibration-period rule in CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy, early false positives are expected, not bugs; never silently disable a detector class to make the stream quieter.
5. Capability snapshot. Save the as-deployed answer to: which Argus container tag is running, which detection policy / forwarder / sampling / host coverage are in effect, which SIEM the forwarder targets, what the steady-state finding baseline looks like at the end of calibration, and which detector classes (if any) are explicitly disabled and on what timeline they will be re-evaluated. This snapshot is the artifact that lets future debug sessions skip rediscovery — and the never-silently-disable rule says the disable list MUST be in the snapshot.

debug

Layered diagnosis. Walk the layers in this order; do not skip down without clearing the layer above. The five layers match CAPABILITIES.md ## Error taxonomy. To "clear" a layer, capture the layer's named healthy evidence and show that its listed symptoms are absent; applying a proposed resolution alone does not clear it.

1. Container runtime layer. Is the Argus container actually running and not restart-looping? Symptoms: container exits immediately, image pull fails, restart count climbing. Resolution: confirm the image tag matches what the public guide names for the operator's DOCA release; confirm the config mount path matches what the public guide names; confirm BlueField has the runtime configured per the public Container Deployment Guide. This layer is owned by the container runtime, not by detection policy. Cleared when: the release-matched image is running, its restart count is stable across two reads, and the documented config mount is present.
2. Detection-policy layer. Container green; no findings arriving (false-negative posture) or far too many findings arriving (false-positive flood). Resolution: walk the detection-policy section of the public Argus Service Guide against the user's actual workload pattern. Per the calibration-period rule in CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy, early-deployment false positives are expected and call for tuning, not for silently disabling detectors; sustained false negatives call for confirming the detection policy actually covers the classes of anomaly the user cares about. Do NOT recommend silently disabling a detector class to quiet the stream. Use the public guide's tuning surface or the sampling knob instead, and if a disable is truly needed, document it and time-box it. Cleared when: the required documented smoke detections pass, the recorded calibration budget holds for its observation window, and no detector is disabled outside the disable register.
3. Forwarding-destination layer. Findings present in Argus's local finding feed; SIEM ingest empty. Resolution: walk the forwarder config in the Argus container, the network reachability from the BlueField to the SIEM endpoint, and the auth material the SIEM is configured to accept. This layer is owned by the forwarder and the SIEM-side ingest, not by the detection policy — re-tuning the detection policy here is wasted effort. Cleared when: the local finding and the same finding identifier appear at the intended SIEM destination, and the documented forwarder health signal remains green.
4. Sampling / performance layer. Argus healthy, findings correct, SIEM receiving — but the host workload's performance is noticeably impacted (CPU / latency) since Argus started. Resolution: the sampling knob is the first thing to re-tune per the public guide; lower the sampling tier to the production posture (it is a different posture from lab sampling). Do NOT respond to performance impact by disabling detector classes silently — re-tune sampling first, then re-tune detection policy if sampling alone is insufficient, and document any disable. Cleared when: the workload's pre-recorded CPU/latency budget holds during a representative observation window while required smoke detections still pass.
5. Host-coverage layer. Argus healthy, findings correct, SIEM receiving — but the findings are about the wrong host targets (silent about the workload the operator cared about, noisy about out-of-scope targets). Resolution: walk the host-coverage axis in the Argus config per the public guide and re-scope. The Argus container can be perfectly green and still be looking the wrong direction. Cleared when: documented smoke events from every intended target are observed and equivalent events from explicitly out-of-scope targets do not enter the review stream.
6. Version layer. When the public Argus Service Guide page appears to disagree with what the deployed container does, the docs version may not match the container tag. Walk doca-version TASKS.md ## debug layer 2 (partial install / version mismatch) and apply the container-tag overlay from CAPABILITIES.md ## Version compatibility. Cleared when: the running container tag, release-matched guide, and applicable DOCA/BFB anchors satisfy the doca-version check.
7. Cross-cutting layer. For env-side and program-side debug that is not Argus-specific (host install, host kernel, DOCA library errors Argus may surface), drop to doca-debug TASKS.md ## debug. Cleared when: the owning debug skill names and observes its green signal; Argus does not declare this layer clear on its behalf.

Command appendix

Argus-specific commands the verbs above reach for, grouped by purpose so the agent picks the right family without searching prose. Every row is a class — the agent must not invent flags beyond what the row names; flag and command discovery is --help on the installed tool or the public guide, not prose recall.

Infra-aware preamble (every row below). Per the bundle's detect → prefer → fall back → report contract documented in doca-structured-tools-contract ## The agent behavior contract, the agent should:

1. Probe for the matching structured helper FIRST (doca-env --json for version + devices + libraries + drivers + hugepages in one shot; the BlueField container manager's structured status output when available).
2. If the probe succeeds, the structured tool's output is the authoritative answer and the agent SHOULD NOT also run the manual command in the row below. Report "using structured <tool>".
3. If the probe fails, fall back to the manual command in the row. Report "falling back to manual chain".
4. The schemas the structured tools emit are defined in doca-structured-tools-contract ## Schemas; the version-handling semantics (four-way match, NGC, headers-win) are owned by doca-version.

Three cross-cutting rules for this appendix:

• Never invent an Argus config key, container tag, detector name, or forwarder protocol detail. The public Argus Service Guide is the contract; the SIEM's own docs are the secondary source for the SIEM-side ingest. Prose-derived flags or detector names are the most common hallucination failure for this skill.
• Container before findings. When triaging, confirm the container layer (running, not restart-looping, image tag correct, detectors activated, forwarder handshake) before reading any finding-layer or SIEM-layer command. A non-running container makes every downstream command meaningless.
• Cross-link instead of duplicate. Cross-cutting env commands (port-state, devlink, ip link, ethtool) live in doca-setup TASKS.md ## Command appendix; this appendix names only the Argus-specific ones.

Deferred task verbs

• Installing DOCA on the BlueField — out of scope here. Route to doca-setup ## configure for env preparation and doca-setup ## test for install health verification, or doca-setup ## no-install for the public NGC DOCA container path.
• Configuring the SIEM-side ingest (Splunk forwarder stanzas, Logstash pipelines, Sentinel data-connector blocks) — out of scope here. The Argus contract is that the forwarder must reach the SIEM and what the documented forwarder format is; the SIEM-side ingest body is the SIEM team's responsibility and lives in the SIEM's own documentation.
• Designing the security posture (which classes of anomaly matter for a given workload, regulatory mappings, incident response runbooks) — out of scope here. That is a security-program / posture-design concern that the operator and the security ops team own; Argus only emits findings the posture has decided are worth emitting.
• Building a custom DPU-side security tool — not an Argus question. That is the DOCA App Shield library, which is not covered by this bundle (policy-excluded from the public release); route the user to the public docs via doca-public-knowledge-map plus doca-programming-guide ## build for the canonical build pattern.
• Other DOCA services (DMS / DTS / Firefly / BlueMan / HBN / …) — not Argus. Route to doca-public-knowledge-map ## DOCA services for the routing table and the matching services/<service> skill when it exists (e.g. doca-dms ## configure for device management, or doca-firefly ## configure for PTP). The container-shaped deployment pattern is shared; the per-service domain is different.

Cross-cutting

• The public DOCA Argus Service Guide is the single source of truth. Any config key, detector name, container tag, forwarder protocol detail, or observability output the agent quotes must come from there, not from generic security-tooling knowledge or memory from a previous Argus release.
• Argus is END-TO-END. The container emits findings; the forwarder ships them to the SIEM; the SIEM ingests and presents; the security ops team reviews. All four legs are mandatory; naming only one is how the channel silently breaks.
• Path-selection is mandatory up front. Argus (the packaged product) is the production default; the DOCA App Shield library (not covered by this bundle) is the right answer only when the user is genuinely building their own security product; observability questions go to DOCA Telemetry Service; no-security-concern cases get Argus not deployed.
• Expect a calibration period; never silently disable findings. Initial false positives are tuning input, not bugs. A detector class that must be turned off is turned off explicitly, with a reason and a re-evaluation date — the silent disable is the failure mode this skill exists to prevent.
• Smoke before bulk. One known-benign event must traverse the full Argus → forwarder → SIEM pipeline, with a baseline established, before the SIEM team's production alerting is enabled on the channel.
• For URL routing to the Argus guide and other public DOCA documentation, see doca-public-knowledge-map ## DOCA services.