Documentation/vhost-user-ovs-dpdk

Vhost-user with OVS/DPDK as backend

The purpose of this document is to describe the steps needed to setup a development machine for vhost-user testing. All the information here is taken from various sources available online.

The goal is to connect guests' virtio-net devices having vhost-user backend to OVS dpdkvhostuser ports and be able to run any kind of network traffic between them.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have hugepages enabled in kernel command line:

 default_hugepagesz=2M hugepagesz=2M hugepages=1024

DPDK setup

Get the sources

git clone git://dpdk.org/dpdk
cd dpdk

Edit the configuration file:

diff --git a/config/common_linuxapp b/config/common_linuxapp
index 0de43d5..5260501 100644
--- a/config/common_linuxapp
+++ b/config/common_linuxapp
@@ -81,12 +81,12 @@ CONFIG_RTE_ARCH_STRICT_ALIGN=n
 #
 # Compile to share library
 #
-CONFIG_RTE_BUILD_SHARED_LIB=n
+CONFIG_RTE_BUILD_SHARED_LIB=y

 #
 # Combine to one single library
 #
-CONFIG_RTE_BUILD_COMBINE_LIBS=n
+CONFIG_RTE_BUILD_COMBINE_LIBS=y

 #
 # Use newest code breaking previous ABI

Build it

export RTE_SDK=<dpdk_folder>
export RTE_TARGET=x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc
make -j<cpu num> T=x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc EXTRA_CFLAGS='-g'
yes | sudo cp -f ./x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc/lib/libdpdk.so /lib64/libdpdk.so (optional, if ovs is having problems finding the library)

OVS setup

Get the sources:

 git clone https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs
 cd ovs

Build it:

./boot.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --with-dpdk=<dpdk dir>/x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc  --disable-ssl --with-debug  CFLAGS='-g'
make -j <cpu num>

QEMU setup

Get the sources:

git://git.qemu.org/qemu.git
cd qemu

Build it:

./configure --target-list=x86_64-softmmu --enable-debug --extra-cflags='-g'
make -j <cpu num>