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Cannot install bpftool in ubuntu-latest runner #14203

@Evian-Zhang

Description

@Evian-Zhang

Description

bpftool is a tool provided by linux-tools-common, which is used to manipulate ebpf binaries.

The /usr/sbin/bpftool installed is usually a thin shellscript wrapper to locate the actual bpftool binary, and that shellscript file DOES exist after installing. However, invoking bpftool -V (which is to show the version) will turn out error:

WARNING: bpftool not found for kernel 6.17.0-1015
  You may need to install the following packages for this specific kernel:
    linux-tools-6.17.0-1015-azure
    linux-cloud-tools-6.17.0-1015-azure
  You may also want to install one of the following packages to keep up to date:
    linux-tools-azure
    linux-cloud-tools-azure

This message is the standard error report when the shellscript wrapper could not locate the binary.

Platforms affected

  • Azure DevOps
  • GitHub Actions - Standard Runners
  • GitHub Actions - Larger Runners

Runner images affected

  • Ubuntu 22.04
  • Ubuntu 24.04
  • Ubuntu Slim
  • macOS 14
  • macOS 14 Arm64
  • macOS 15
  • macOS 15 Arm64
  • macOS 26
  • macOS 26 Arm64
  • Windows Server 2022
  • Windows Server 2025
  • Windows Server 2025 with Visual Studio 2026

Image version and build link

20260525.161.1

Is it regression?

No

Expected behavior

The bpftool can be invoked successfully

Actual behavior

WARNING: bpftool not found for kernel 6.17.0-1015
  You may need to install the following packages for this specific kernel:
    linux-tools-6.17.0-1015-azure
    linux-cloud-tools-6.17.0-1015-azure
  You may also want to install one of the following packages to keep up to date:
    linux-tools-azure
    linux-cloud-tools-azure

Repro steps

  steps:
    - name: Setup apt dependencies
      run: |
        sudo apt-get update
        sudo apt-get install -y \
          linux-cloud-tools-$(uname -r) \
          linux-cloud-tools-azure \
          linux-tools-$(uname -r) \
          linux-tools-azure \
          linux-tools-common \
          linux-tools-generic
    - name: Invoke bpftool
      run: bpftool -V

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