Installation

Requirements

• Linux. privmap analyzes Linux systems; macOS and Windows are not supported targets.
• Python 3.8 or later.
• Root privileges to scan a live system for complete results. privmap will run as a regular user but cannot read /etc/shadow, walk all of /etc, enumerate other users' processes, or list /var/spool/cron/crontabs, and its findings will be incomplete.

The collector script for snapshot mode needs only a POSIX shell. No Python on the target.

From PyPI

pip install privmap

privmap depends on networkx for the in-memory graph and rich for the terminal renderer.

From source

git clone https://github.com/isaacc2/privmap.git
cd privmap
pip install -e .

To run the test suite or contribute, install the dev extras:

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/ -v
ruff check privmap/

To build the documentation locally:

pip install -e ".[docs]"
mkdocs serve
# then open http://127.0.0.1:8000

Verifying the install

privmap --version

Should print privmap <version>. If the command is not found, ensure the script directory of your Python install is on PATH (often ~/.local/bin for user installs).

Running with sudo

The common pattern is:

sudo privmap

This gives privmap read access to /etc/shadow, every cron and systemd unit, and the /proc entries of other users' processes. Findings without root are still useful but partial; privmap will log a WARNING for each privileged source it could not read.