Alan Maguire

About me

Linux kernel engineer interested in BPF, observability, AI, networking.

Creator of bpftune - BPF-based auto-tuning of Linux systems.

Co-maintainer of pahole - examine, translate and create debug info; used in the kernel to create kernel/module BPF Type Format (BTF) information critical to BPF operation.

The thread that connects all of this work is a strong belief that systems should be easier to understand. To realize that we should be able to

1. observe as large a surface of our systems as possible; and
2. that process of observability should be as simple as possible

Much of my work is dedicated to helping achieve these goals.

Github LinkedIn

Selected blog entries

• BPF - Adding Inline Function Information to the BPF Type Format (BTF)
• BPF - Making Split BPF Type Format (BTF) more resilient
• USDT Tracing Across Different Runtimes
• From kernel to user-space tracing
• Introducing bpftune for lightweight, always-on autotuning of system behaviour
• bpftune - Using Reinforcement Learning in BPF
• Data-centric tracing
• Taming Tracepoints in the Linux Kernel
• Tracing Python with DTrace

Selected Talks (2021-present)

• Linux Plumbers 2026 (with Arnaldo Carvhalo de Melo): Extending the BPF Type Format to support more languages
• Linux Plumbers 2026: BPF, sysctls and programmable kernel decision points
• Linux Plumbers 2025 (with Yonghong Song from Meta): Supply true signatures to vmlinux BTF
• Linux Plumbers 2024 (with Yonghong Song): Kernel function tracing in the face of compiler optimizations
• Linux Plumbers 2024: User-space only uprobes
• eBPF summit 2024: bysyscall: exploring using eBPF to bypass syscalls
• eBPF summit 2023: bpftune: auto-tuning Linux with eBPF
• eBPF summit 2022: The power of a self-describing kernel: how BTF can benefit applications
• eBPF summit 2021: Data-centric tracing using the BPF Type Formathttps://youtu.be/PRiJYuDMtEQ)