The GitHub page linked here mentions the word “eBPF” 18 times and yet not once does it expand on what this abbreviation means.
It's extremely berkeley packet fun.
A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
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Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#12Something’s off here. I’m reasonably well read and literate on computer topics, I’ve worked in cyber security for over 5 years now, and extremely open-minded to new ideas — this reads at best like derivative marketing jargon and little in the way of technical.
Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#13The GitHub page linked here mentions the word “eBPF” 18 times and yet not once does it expand on what this abbreviation means.
while originally it's "extended Berkeley Packet Filter", at this point it does so much more than packet filtering that spelling out the words probably increases confusion rather than clarifying anything
it's like a reverse backronym
Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#14The entire first page begs the question -- "what is eBPF?"
After looking at the link first, this comment cracked me up. I skimmed most of the GH content without figuring out the answer; I wasn't going to click an O'Reilly link. So I gave up. Then my OCD kicked in and I got annoyed with myself for giving up, since if I'm going to waste time on HN I should really get to the bottom of things. So searched it. I found this: https://ebpf.io/what-is-ebpf/ It runs sandboxed kernel e…
> It runs sandboxed kernel extensions? Or it's a VM?
Yes to both of those.
The kernel has a bunch of extension points that can run eBPF code in a VM. That code can make decisions for the kernel and/or track events.
eBPF code can do basically any calculation you want, but it can't have infinite loops.
It's loaded as bytecode, with a spec for how it's formatted and what the instructions do and what data structures are built in to the VM.
The main benefit is that it runs in the kernel, so it can be triggered very very often with minimal performance impact.
Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#15I’m new to Linux kernel programming & eBPF (just started last week) and I’m having major troubles with eBPF verifier. I honestly feel like it would be easier for me to write a kernel module than eBPF code.
I do wonder if this is the case for many people. It seems verifier is a bit unpredictable and makes eBPF programming quite painful.
Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#16If you are into podcasts, she was on "Screaming in the Cloud" recently, and talks about what eBPF enables, how to teach technologies and more.
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud...
Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#17I’m new to Linux kernel programming & eBPF (just started last week) and I’m having major troubles with eBPF verifier. I honestly feel like it would be easier for me to write a kernel module than eBPF code. I do wonder if this is the case for many people. It seems verifier is a bit unpredictable and makes eBPF programming quite painful.
It would be much easier to write a kernel module than an eBPF program. But the eBPF program is unlikely to panic your machine, and the kernel module is almost certain to.
Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#18The entire first page begs the question -- "what is eBPF?"
Is a joke going over my head here, because the first sentence links to a document titled "what is eBPF?"
The joke is you have to give them all your information in a form to then download some B2B report... rather than add two sentences about what ePBF is
Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#19Looks like a "buy my book" ad to me...
Hey. Please be more careful. The author of this repository isn't the story submitter. People write things that end up on Hacker News all the time with no idea that it's even happened, let alone any intention to promote things to you.
Re: A Beginner's Guide to eBPF
#20Something’s off here. I’m reasonably well read and literate on computer topics, I’ve worked in cyber security for over 5 years now, and extremely open-minded to new ideas — this reads at best like derivative marketing jargon and little in the way of technical.
eBPF is an extremely big deal in computer and network security, so, I assure you, this isn't "derivative marketing jargon", and it is very technical.