yara/docs/gettingstarted.rst

***************
Getting started
***************

YARA is a multi-platform program running on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. You can
find the latest release at https://github.com/VirusTotal/yara/releases.

.. _compiling-yara:

Compiling and installing YARA
=============================

Download the source tarball and get prepared for compiling it::

    tar -zxf yara-4.5.0.tar.gz
    cd yara-4.5.0
    ./bootstrap.sh

Make sure you have ``automake``, ``libtool``, ``make``  and ``gcc`` and ``pkg-config`` installed in your system. Ubuntu and Debian users can use::

    sudo apt-get install automake libtool make gcc pkg-config

If you plan to modify YARA's source code you may also need ``flex`` and
``bison`` for generating lexers and parsers::

   sudo apt-get install flex bison

Compile and install YARA in the standard way::

    ./bootstrap.sh
    ./configure
    make
    sudo make install

Run the test cases to make sure that everything is fine::

    make check

Some of YARA's features depend on the OpenSSL library. Those features are
enabled only if you have the OpenSSL library installed in your system. If not,
YARA is going to work fine but you won't be able to use the disabled features.
The ``configure`` script will automatically detect if OpenSSL is installed or
not. If you want to enforce the OpenSSL-dependent features you must pass
``--with-crypto`` to the ``configure`` script. Ubuntu and Debian users can use
``sudo apt-get install libssl-dev`` to install the OpenSSL library.

The following modules are not compiled into YARA by default:

* cuckoo
* magic

If you plan to use them you must pass the corresponding ``--enable-<module
name>`` arguments to the ``configure`` script.

For example::

    ./configure --enable-cuckoo
    ./configure --enable-magic
    ./configure --enable-cuckoo --enable-magic

Modules usually depend on external libraries, depending on the modules you
choose to install you'll need the following libraries:

* cuckoo:
        Depends on `Jansson <http://www.digip.org/jansson/>`_ for parsing JSON.
        Some Ubuntu and Debian versions already include a package named
        ``libjansson-dev``, if ``sudo apt-get install libjansson-dev`` doesn't
        work for you then get the source code from
        `its repository <https://github.com/akheron/jansson>`_.


* magic:
        Depends on *libmagic*, a library used by the Unix standard program
        `file <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_(command)>`_.
        Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS include a package
        ``libmagic-dev``. The source code can be found
        `here <ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/file/>`_.

Installing with vcpkg
---------------------

You can also download and install YARA using the `vcpkg <https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg/>`_ dependency manager::

    git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git
    cd vcpkg
    ./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
    ./vcpkg integrate install
    vcpkg install yara

The YARA port in vcpkg is kept up to date by Microsoft team members and community contributors. If the version is out
of date, please `create an issue or pull request <https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg/>`_ on the vcpkg repository.


Installing on Windows
---------------------

Compiled binaries for Windows in both 32 and 64 bit flavors can be found in the
link below. Just download the version you want, unzip the archive, and put the
``yara.exe`` and ``yarac.exe`` binaries anywhere in your disk.

`Download Windows binaries <https://github.com/VirusTotal/yara/releases/latest>`_

To install YARA using `Scoop <https://scoop.sh>`_ or `Chocolatey <https://chocolatey.org>`_, simply type
``scoop install yara`` or ``choco install yara``. The integration with both `Scoop` and `Chocolatey` are
not maintained their respective teams, not by the YARA authors.


Installing on Mac OS X with Homebrew
------------------------------------

To install YARA using `Homebrew <https://brew.sh>`_, simply type
``brew install yara``.


Installing ``yara-python``
----------------------

If you plan to use YARA from your Python scripts you need to install the
``yara-python`` extension. Please refer to https://github.com/VirusTotal/yara-python
for instructions on how to install it.


Running YARA for the first time
===============================

Now that you have installed YARA you can write a very simple rule and use the
command-line tool to scan some file:

.. code-block:: sh

    echo "rule dummy { condition: true }" > my_first_rule
    yara my_first_rule my_first_rule

Don't get confused by the repeated ``my_first_rule`` in the arguments to
``yara``, I'm just passing the same file as both the rules and the file to
be scanned. You can pass any file you want to be scanned (second argument).

If everything goes fine you should get the following output::

    dummy my_first_rule

Which means that the file ``my_first_rule`` is matching the rule named ``dummy``.

If you get an error like this::

    yara: error while loading shared libraries: libyara.so.2: cannot open shared
    object file: No such file or directory

It means that the loader is not finding the ``libyara`` library which is
located in ``/usr/local/lib``. In some Linux flavors the loader doesn't look for
libraries in this path by default, we must instruct it to do so by adding
``/usr/local/lib`` to the loader configuration file ``/etc/ld.so.conf``::

    sudo sh -c 'echo "/usr/local/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf'
    sudo ldconfig

On newer Ubuntu releases such as 22.04 LTS, the correct loader configuration is
installed via dependencies to ``/etc/ld.so.conf.d/libc.conf``. In this case, the
following command alone is sufficient to configure the dynamic linker run-time
bindings.

    sudo ldconfig

If you're using Windows PowerShell as your command shell, ``yara my_first_rule my_first_rule`` may return this error::

    my_first_rule(1): error: non-ascii character

You can avoid this by using the ``Set-Content`` cmdlet to specify ascii output when creating your rule file::

    Set-Content -path .\my_first_rule -Value "rule dummy { condition: true }" -Encoding Ascii
    .\yara my_first_rule my_first_rule