Is Upstream Really Enough? - Practical Realities of Using eBPF in Long-Term Supported Systems

Explore the practical challenges of deploying eBPF technology in long-term supported (LTS) and embedded environments through this 16-minute conference talk from the Linux Plumbers Conference. Examine the real-world obstacles that arise when implementing eBPF-based observability, networking, and security tools in constrained contexts such as automotive and industrial platforms. Discover the technical pain points including kernel version divergence, verifier incompatibilities, unstable kernel internals despite stable tracepoints, and toolchain inconsistencies with libbpf and libclang that create CI challenges in embedded environments. Learn about organizational and cultural barriers such as security policies that prohibit bpf() usage, differing definitions of "backport," lifecycle misalignments between kernels and eBPF tooling, and the burden of maintaining CI across multiple kernel versions. Understand the proposed "eBPF Embedded Profile" initiative, which aims to establish a structured subset of APIs, helpers, kfuncs, and tooling practices designed to enable safe and predictable eBPF deployment in production-grade LTS environments, including guidance for runtime stability, security vetting, and deployment feasibility as a potential foundation for future standardization efforts.