How to list some files with SQL select?

Question

On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS running this osqueryi command:

osquery> SELECT * FROM file LIMIT 10;

returns no rows. Other tables like users are populated.

Do I need to "activate" something to populate the file table? Is there another table or some thing like the ls command?

Answer 1

There are no need to "activate" something to populate the file table, test with

  SELECT * FROM file WHERE path = '/etc/group';

it is only an uggly way to send parameters to tables like file, device_file, device_partitions, etc. that are flagged at osquery.io/docs/tables with the "required in WHERE clause" icon in some column.

They will fix the information problem with an error message, and perhaps better documentation, see more details here at the issue discussion.