[PATCH v3] kbuild: rpm-pkg: Preserve .BTF section in kernel modules during debuginfo stripping

Yafang Shao <[email protected]> Sun, 26 Jul 2026 10:52:42 +0800
Newsgroups gmane.linux.kbuild.devel,gmane.linux.kernel.bpf
Message-ID <[email protected]>
After switching to the kernel's default package scripts for our local
kernel RPM builds, we noticed that module BTF entries were missing:

  $ ls /sys/kernel/btf/
  vmlinux    <<<< only vmlinux, no module BTF

Root cause: find-debuginfo.sh (from the debugedit package) prefers
eu-strip over strip when elfutils is installed, which is the common
case on RHEL 9. eu-strip removes non-allocated ELF sections, including
the .BTF section that contains BPF Type Format information for kernel
modules. Without .BTF, BPF tools (bpftool, bcc, bpftrace) cannot resolve
kernel types at runtime, and /sys/kernel/btf/<module> entries are not
created when modules are loaded.

Fix by passing --keep-section .BTF via _find_debuginfo_opts, which adds
-K .BTF to the eu-strip/strip command, preserving the .BTF section while
allowing normal debuginfo extraction to proceed.

After this change, all module BTF files are properly generated:

  $ ls /sys/kernel/btf/
  aesni_intel         drm                 i2c_i801            mfd_core
  ahci                drm_client_lib      i2c_mux             net_failover
  backlight           drm_kms_helper      i2c_smbus           pcspkr
  ccp                 drm_shmem_helper    input_leds          qemu_fw_cfg
  dm_log              failover            intel_rapl_common   sch_fq_codel
  dm_mirror           fat                 intel_rapl_msr      serio_raw
  dm_mod              fuse                irqbypass           sunrpc
  dm_region_hash      gf128mul            iTCO_wdt            vfat
  virtio_balloon      virtio_console      virtio_dma_buf      virtio_gpu
  virtio_net          virtio_rng          virtio_blk          vmlinux
  xfs

Suggested-by: Nathan Chancellor <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Yafang Shao <[email protected]>
---
 scripts/package/kernel.spec | 10 ++++++++++
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)

v2->v3: use %{__find_debuginfo} (Nathan)
v1->v2: check if find-debuginfo.sh supports --keep-section (sashiko-bot)

diff --git a/scripts/package/kernel.spec b/scripts/package/kernel.spec
index c732415662ef..1032f337a71c 100644
--- a/scripts/package/kernel.spec
+++ b/scripts/package/kernel.spec
@@ -67,7 +67,17 @@ This package provides debug information for the kernel image and modules from th
 %undefine _unique_debug_srcs
 %undefine _debugsource_packages
 %undefine _debuginfo_subpackages
+
+# Preserve .BTF section in kernel modules during debuginfo stripping
+# find-debuginfo.sh (from debugedit) uses eu-strip which removes
+# non-allocated ELF sections like .BTF by default.
+%global with_keep_section %(%{__find_debuginfo} --help 2>&1 | grep -c keep-section)
+%if %{with_keep_section}
+%global _find_debuginfo_opts -r --keep-section .BTF
+%else
 %global _find_debuginfo_opts -r
+%endif
+
 %global _missing_build_ids_terminate_build 1
 %global _no_recompute_build_ids 1
 %{debug_package}
-- 
2.52.0