XDP/eBPF build environment

Tool chain

The XDP program running (in the driver hook point) is an eBPF program (see eBPF - extended Berkeley Packet Filter). Unless you want to write eBPF machine-code like instruction by hand, you likely want to install some front-ends, that allow you to write some restricted-C code.

Tools for compiling kernel bpf samples requires having installed:

• clang >= version 3.4.0
• llvm >= version 3.7.1

Note that LLVM’s tool ‘llc’ must support target ‘bpf’, list version and supported targets with command: llc --version.

There is also toolkit called BCC (BPF Compiler Collection) that makes eBPF programs easier to write, and front-ends in Python and lua. But it also depend on LLVM.

Build samples/bpf

This github repository also contains some bpf and XDP examples in the directory samples/bpf/. Simply run make in that directory to build the bpf samples.

Linux distros

Fedora 25

Since Fedora 25, the package BCC is included with the distribution, and LLVM+clang in the correct versions.

Install commands for Fedora 25:

dnf install llvm llvm-libs llvm-doc clang clang-libs
dnf install bcc bcc-tools bcc-doc --enablerepo=updates-testing
dnf install kernel-devel
dnf install python3-pyroute2

Note

As of this writing (2017-01-18) BCC for F25 is still in the updates-testing repository.