Solving eBPF Portability: BPF CO-RE to the Rescue

2025-04-23
Solving eBPF Portability: BPF CO-RE to the Rescue

eBPF program execution relies heavily on the kernel version, and differences in struct definitions across kernel versions can cause programs to crash. This article introduces BPF CO-RE, a technique that generates relocation information during compilation and uses BTF (BPF Type Format) information at runtime to correct field offsets, thus solving the portability problem of eBPF programs. Even without BTF support on the target kernel, pre-downloading and embedding BTF files achieves cross-kernel compatibility. The author also provides a GitHub repository with a complete solution that automatically downloads and embeds BTF data, producing a single binary that runs across a wide range of kernels without requiring BTF support on the target system.

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