Debuggers and eBPF: Bringing Debugging to Production - Derek Parker, Red Hat
Channel: CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation]
Date: 30/10/2021

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Debuggers and eBPF: Bringing Debugging to Production - Derek Parker, Red Hat

Your program isn't working... now what?! When it comes to diagnosing misbehaving software a debugger is an essential tool in your developer toolbox. A good debugger is a valuable resource in your development environment, but what about in production? Often times inspecting a program running in your production environment with a debugger is a nonstarter. The overhead incurred when spying on your program can be too much to make this a viable path towards fixing your software. The big question is, does it have to be this way? Can we do better? I think the answer is yes, and that is the focus of this talk. I will explain how to get the best of both worlds: a solid source-level debugger and low-overhead debugging and tracing. This hybrid approach opens up new possibilities for resolving problems in production environments and increasing telemetry and insight in your software while incurring negligible performance overhead. Attendees will walk away with not only a deeper understanding of debuggers and eBPF but also practical information that they can bring back to their development workflow. This talk will be approachable to newcomers while also providing deep technical insights geared towards more advanced engineers.