Running DPDK in a LXC-based Container
================================================================================
Author: Krishnamurthy Jambur
Note: This README assumes you have the a LXC based container running on
the IA platform. This was tested on Windriver OVP Linux 6.0
In this README we are will go through some of the unique steps involved
in attaching a NIC to the LXC-based Container and the running a sample
DPDP application in the container.
1. Attaching NIC device to the container
----------------------------------------
Let's assume for this example that you would like to have a management interface
and then separate dedicated 10G NIC to run DPDK. With this requirement your LXC
config file should have one networking sections one for veth. For the 10G NIC we
need to use uio device file system
veth uses a paired set of network interfaces, one inside the container
specified
by the option lxc.network.name, and one in the host specified by the option
lxc.network.pair. The latter is attached automatically to a bridge in the host
if the name of the bridge is specified by the option lxc.network.link.
# networking-veth
lxc.network.type = veth
lxc.network.link = virbr0
lxc.network.veth.pair = vc0
lxc.network.name = eth0
lxc.network.hwaddr = ac:de:48:34:01:01
lxc.network.flags = up
lxc.network.ipv4 = 192.168.122.12/24
lxc.network.ipv4.gateway = 192.168.122.1
once you have this your LXC container will have an IP using bridge. Next step
is to install DPDK igb_uio on the host and then bind it to the the 10G Niantic
NIC ports as usual. Once installed do ls -l /dev/uio* on the host. These are the
uioX interface corresponding to the the NIC ports to which DPDK igb_uio is
binded. DPDK application will use these device files. In order to provide access
to these device files inside the LXC container not down the major number [e.g.
in this case 249] and add this config to the LXC config file
lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 249:* rwm
once you start the container then you need to create these uio0, uio1,...
devices nodes inside the container file system using mknod command as usual
with the same major and minor numbers.
mknod /dev/uio3 c 249 0
mknod /dev/uio3 c 249 3
mknod /dev/uio2 c 249 2
mknod /dev/uio1 c 249 1
2. Host allocated Huge page access inside container
----------------------------------------------------
For this set it is assumes that you would have pre-allocated hugepages and
mounted on the on the host. Once you have this set-up then you need to provide
access to hugetlbfs file system to the container using the LXC config file.
lxc.mount.entry = /mnt/huge mnt/huge none bind,create=dir 0 0
once you have this DPDK application will be able to use the host mounted huge
pages in the container.
Next step is run the DPDK application as usual in the LXC Container
Regards,
Krishna
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