DocumentationGrafana PyroscopeConfigure the clientGrafana AgentProfiling with eBPFSetting up on Docker

Setup eBPF Profiling on Docker

To set up eBPF profiling with Grafana Agent on Linux, you need to:

• Verify that your system meets the requirements.
• Create a Grafana Agent configuration file. For more information, refer to the Configuration reference.
• Run Grafana Agent or Grafana Alloy.
• Verify that profiles are received.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you need:

• A Pyroscope server where the agent will send profiling data.
• Access to Grafana with the Grafana Pyroscope datasource provisioned.
• Docker Engine installed.

Verify system meets the requirements

The eBPF profiler requires a Linux kernel version >= 4.9 (due to BPF_PROG_TYPE_PERF_EVENT).

BPF_PROG_TYPE_PERF_EVENT is a type of eBPF program that can be attached to hardware or software events, such as performance monitoring counters or tracepoints, in the Linux kernel.

To print the kernel version of your docker host, run:

shell Copy

docker info | grep Kernel

Make sure you have a kernel version >= 4.9.

Configure Grafana Agent

You can configure the Grafana Agent eBPF profiler to profile local containers. To do so, use the discovery.docker component to discover local containers and the pyroscope.ebpf component to profile them.

Create a file named agent.river with the following content:

river Copy

discovery.docker "local_containers" {
 host = "unix:///var/run/docker.sock"
}

pyroscope.ebpf "instance" {
 forward_to     = [pyroscope.write.endpoint.receiver]
 targets = discovery.docker.local_containers.targets
}


pyroscope.write "endpoint" {
 endpoint {
  basic_auth {
   password = "<PASSWORD>"
   username = "<USERNAME>"
  }
  url = "<URL>"
 }
 external_labels = {
  "env"      = "testing",
  "instance" = env("HOSTNAME"),
 }
}

Replace the <URL> placeholder with the appropriate server URL. This could be the Grafana Cloud URL or your own custom Pyroscope server URL.

If you need to send data to Grafana Cloud, you’ll have to configure HTTP Basic authentication. Replace <User> with your Grafana Cloud stack user and <Password> with your Grafana Cloud API key.

For more information, refer to the Configure the Grafana Pyroscope data source documentation.

Start Grafana Agent

To start Grafana Agent with Docker, run:

shell Copy

docker run \
  -e AGENT_MODE=flow \
  -v $PWD/agent.river:/etc/agent/config.river \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  --pid=host \
  --privileged \
  -p 12345:12345 \
  grafana/agent:latest \
    run --server.http.listen-addr=0.0.0.0:12345 /etc/agent/config.river

Note: The --pid=host and --privileged flags are required to profile local containers with ebpf.

Verify profiles are received

To verify that the profiles are received by the Pyroscope server, go to the Pyroscope UI or Grafana Pyroscope datasource. Then select a profile type and a service from the dropdown menu.