Linux Tracing Superpowers

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Eugene Pirogov

For a long time Linux was far behind operating systems of Unix family from the perspective of debuggability, specifically in a live production systems.

However, over the course of 2016 Linux saw a series of patches that brought it on par with Unix world: an old Linux tool called BPF has risen and extended into powerful new one – eBPF. Some say that eBPF marks the begining of true DTrace for Linux.

During the presentation I'm going to talk about tracing basics, cover a series of events that led to the development of eBPF and will compare eBPF with DTrace from Unix world. Current state of affairs of Linux tracing tools will be explored. Finally, together we'll look at some of the exciting examples of eBPF application.


Eugene is well known in our Ruby (and Elixir) communities. Last time when he was at #pivorak he made a very light and interesting intro to the Elixir. You can check his speech out here - http://bit.ly/2evCd9R