How LinkedIn Identified a Kernel Lock Contention Issue Causing Recurring System Freezes

📰 InfoQ AI/ML

Learn how LinkedIn used off-CPU profiling with eBPF to identify a kernel lock contention issue causing system freezes

advanced Published 27 May 2026
Action Steps
  1. Use eBPF to collect off-CPU profiling data
  2. Analyze the collected data to identify patterns and anomalies
  3. Configure eBPF to trace specific system calls and events
  4. Apply filtering and aggregation techniques to refine the analysis
  5. Test and validate the findings by reproducing the issue
Who Needs to Know This

This approach benefits DevOps and software engineering teams who need to troubleshoot complex system issues, especially those involving kernel-level problems.

Key Insight

💡 Off-CPU profiling with eBPF can help identify kernel-level issues that are difficult to detect with traditional profiling methods

Share This
💡 LinkedIn used eBPF to solve mysterious system freezes! #eBPF #DevOps

Key Takeaways

Learn how LinkedIn used off-CPU profiling with eBPF to identify a kernel lock contention issue causing system freezes

Full Article

When LinkedIn engineers encountered short-lived, recurring outages where the database powering their user feed became unavailable and then recover without leaving helpful traces, they had to devise a novel approach to uncover the root cause using off-CPU profiling with eBPF. By Sergio De Simone
Read full article → ← Back to Reads

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