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eBPF: Loading in different kernels

Objective

  • to learn loading compiled eBPF program in different kernels within Github Actions
    • for testing its compatibility with kernel and observe if it loads correctly
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Reasoning

LVH

For loading eBPF object in different kernels, we will be using little-vm-helper(LVH), an open-source cilium project for creating light-weight virtual machines.

LVH has Github Action that can be used to launch a little-vm with a custom linux-kernel image inside Github Action Runner VM.

LVH Images

Kernel images used by LVH are built using another open-source cilium project namely little-vm-helper-images. These kernel-images are stored here.

As of now 3 variants of images are available:

  • base
  • kind
  • complexity-test

These differ by:

Code

Note

Try forking the ebpf-playground and triggering the workflows.

load.yml
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name: LVH Load

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

jobs:

  load-vm:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: eBPF Load
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        kernel: # (1)!
          - "6.6-20250616.013250-amd64" # (2)!
          - "5.15-20250616.013250-amd64"
          - "5.10-20250610.043823-amd64"

    timeout-minutes: 10
    steps:

        # (3)!
      - run: | 
          wget --quiet https://github.com/cilium/ebpf/raw/refs/heads/main/examples/cgroup_skb/bpf_bpfel.o  
          ls -lah
      # (4)!
      - name: Provision LVH VMs
        uses: cilium/little-vm-helper@v0.0.23
        with:
          test-name: load-test
          image: "kind"
          image-version: ${{ matrix.kernel }}
          host-mount: .
          install-dependencies: "true"
          cmd: |
            # print kernel version
            echo "Kernel Version: "
            uname -a

            # goto where host is mounted
            echo ""
            cd /host
            ls -lah

            echo ""
            sudo bpftool prog load ./bpf_bpfel.o /sys/fs/bpf/test && echo "Load Success"
  1. Visit here for getting kernel tags
  2. List of kernel images to test against.
  3. Downloading the eBPF object to load

  4. Note

    1. Using LVH to provision virtual-machine with given kernel
    2. Mounting the $PWD inside VM at /host
    3. Loading the program

Refer