Refactor internals of libbpf to allow adding custom SEC() handling logic easily from outside of libbpf. To that effect, each SEC()-handling registration sets mandatory program type/expected attach type for a given prefix and can provide three callbacks called at different points of BPF program lifetime: - init callback for right after bpf_program is initialized and prog_type/expected_attach_type is set. This happens during bpf_object__open() step, close to the very end of constructing bpf_object, so all the libbpf APIs for querying and updating bpf_program properties should be available; - pre-load callback is called right before BPF_PROG_LOAD command is called in the kernel. This callbacks has ability to set both bpf_program properties, as well as program load attributes, overriding and augmenting the standard libbpf handling of them; - optional auto-attach callback, which makes a given SEC() handler support auto-attachment of a BPF program through bpf_program__attach() API and/or BPF skeletons <skel>__attach() method. Each callbacks gets a `long cookie` parameter passed in, which is specified during SEC() handling. This can be used by callbacks to lookup whatever additional information is necessary. This is not yet completely ready to be exposed to the outside world, mainly due to non-public nature of struct bpf_prog_load_params. Instead of making it part of public API, we'll wait until the planned low-level libbpf API improvements for BPF_PROG_LOAD and other typical bpf() syscall APIs, at which point we'll have a public, probably OPTS-based, way to fully specify BPF program load parameters, which will be used as an interface for custom pre-load callbacks. But this change itself is already a good first step to unify the BPF program hanling logic even within the libbpf itself. As one example, all the extra per-program type handling (sleepable bit, attach_btf_id resolution, unsetting optional expected attach type) is now more obvious and is gathered in one place. Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org> Acked-by: Dave Marchevsky <davemarchevsky@fb.com> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20210928161946.2512801-6-andrii@kernel.org
This is a mirror of bpf-next Linux source
tree's
tools/lib/bpf directory plus its supporting header files.
All the gory details of syncing can be found in scripts/sync-kernel.sh
script.
Some header files in this repo (include/linux/*.h) are reduced versions of
their counterpart files at
bpf-next's
tools/include/linux/*.h to make compilation successful.
BPF/libbpf usage and questions
Please check out libbpf-bootstrap and the companion blog post for the examples of building BPF applications with libbpf. libbpf-tools are also a good source of the real-world libbpf-based tracing tools.
All general BPF questions, including kernel functionality, libbpf APIs and their application, should be sent to bpf@vger.kernel.org mailing list. You can subscribe to it here and search its archive here. Please search the archive before asking new questions. It very well might be that this was already addressed or answered before.
bpf@vger.kernel.org is monitored by many more people and they will happily try to help you with whatever issue you have. This repository's PRs and issues should be opened only for dealing with issues pertaining to specific way this libbpf mirror repo is set up and organized.
Build

libelf is an internal dependency of libbpf and thus it is required to link
against and must be installed on the system for applications to work.
pkg-config is used by default to find libelf, and the program called can be
overridden with PKG_CONFIG.
If using pkg-config at build time is not desired, it can be disabled by
setting NO_PKG_CONFIG=1 when calling make.
To build both static libbpf.a and shared libbpf.so:
$ cd src
$ make
To build only static libbpf.a library in directory build/ and install them together with libbpf headers in a staging directory root/:
$ cd src
$ mkdir build root
$ BUILD_STATIC_ONLY=y OBJDIR=build DESTDIR=root make install
To build both static libbpf.a and shared libbpf.so against a custom libelf dependency installed in /build/root/ and install them together with libbpf headers in a build directory /build/root/:
$ cd src
$ PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/build/root/lib64/pkgconfig DESTDIR=/build/root make install
Distributions
Distributions packaging libbpf from this mirror:
Benefits of packaging from the mirror over packaging from kernel sources:
- Consistent versioning across distributions.
- No ties to any specific kernel, transparent handling of older kernels. Libbpf is designed to be kernel-agnostic and work across multitude of kernel versions. It has built-in mechanisms to gracefully handle older kernels, that are missing some of the features, by working around or gracefully degrading functionality. Thus libbpf is not tied to a specific kernel version and can/should be packaged and versioned independently.
- Continuous integration testing via TravisCI.
- Static code analysis via LGTM and Coverity.
Package dependencies of libbpf, package names may vary across distros:
- zlib
- libelf
BPF CO-RE (Compile Once – Run Everywhere)
Libbpf supports building BPF CO-RE-enabled applications, which, in contrast to BCC, do not require Clang/LLVM runtime being deployed to target servers and doesn't rely on kernel-devel headers being available.
It does rely on kernel to be built with BTF type information, though. Some major Linux distributions come with kernel BTF already built in:
- Fedora 31+
- RHEL 8.2+
- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (in the next release, as of 2020-06-04)
- Arch Linux (from kernel 5.7.1.arch1-1)
- Manjaro (from kernel 5.4 if compiled after 2021-06-18)
- Ubuntu 20.10
- Debian 11 (amd64/arm64)
If your kernel doesn't come with BTF built-in, you'll need to build custom kernel. You'll need:
pahole1.16+ tool (part ofdwarvespackage), which performs DWARF to BTF conversion;- kernel built with
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=yoption; - you can check if your kernel has BTF built-in by looking for
/sys/kernel/btf/vmlinuxfile:
$ ls -la /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
-r--r--r--. 1 root root 3541561 Jun 2 18:16 /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
To develop and build BPF programs, you'll need Clang/LLVM 10+. The following distributions have Clang/LLVM 10+ packaged by default:
- Fedora 32+
- Ubuntu 20.04+
- Arch Linux
- Ubuntu 20.10 (LLVM 11)
- Debian 11 (LLVM 11)
- Alpine 3.13+
Otherwise, please make sure to update it on your system.
The following resources are useful to understand what BPF CO-RE is and how to use it:
- BPF Portability and CO-RE
- HOWTO: BCC to libbpf conversion
- libbpf-tools in BCC repo contain lots of real-world tools converted from BCC to BPF CO-RE. Consider converting some more to both contribute to the BPF community and gain some more experience with it.
License
This work is dual-licensed under BSD 2-clause license and GNU LGPL v2.1 license. You can choose between one of them if you use this work.
SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause OR LGPL-2.1