Installation and basic setup of Suricata

First, add the latest stable Suricata repository to APT:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oisf/suricata-stable
sudo apt-get update

Now you can either install Suricata with:

sudo apt-get install suricata 

or the Suricata package with built-in (enabled) debugging

sudo apt-get install suricata-dbg

Basic setup

Start with creating a directory for Suricata’s log information.

sudo mkdir /var/log/suricata

To prepare the system for using it, enter:

sudo mkdir /etc/suricata

The next step is to copy classification.config, reference.config and suricata.yaml from the base build/installation directory (ex. from git it will be the oisf directory) to the /etc/suricata directory. Do so by entering the following:

sudo cp classification.config /etc/suricata
sudo cp reference.config /etc/suricata
sudo cp suricata.yaml /etc/suricata

Auto setup

You can also use the available auto setup features of Suricata:

The make install-conf option will do the regular „make install“ and then automatically create/setup all the necessary directories and suricata.yaml.

 ./configure && make && make install-conf

The make install-rules option will do the regular „make install“ and it automatically downloads and sets up the latest ruleset from Emerging Threats available for Suricata.

./configure && make && make install-rules

The make install-full option combines everything mentioned above (install-conf and install-rules) – and will present you with a ready to run (configured and set up) Suricata

./configure && make && make install-full

Source:

Suricata – Ubuntu installation