The HOWTO guide for using virtio-user as an exception path to the kernel
only provided an example of how testpmd may be used for that purpose.
However, a real application wanting to use virtio-user as exception path
would likely want to create such devices from code within the app
itself. Therefore, we update the doc with instructions and a code
snippet showing how this may be done.
Signed-off-by: Bruce Richardson <bruce.richard...@intel.com>
Acked-by: Stephen Hemminger <step...@networkplumber.org>
---
.../howto/virtio_user_as_exception_path.rst | 55 +++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 55 insertions(+)
diff --git a/doc/guides/howto/virtio_user_as_exception_path.rst
b/doc/guides/howto/virtio_user_as_exception_path.rst
index a7f0d366fe..2af1778578 100644
--- a/doc/guides/howto/virtio_user_as_exception_path.rst
+++ b/doc/guides/howto/virtio_user_as_exception_path.rst
@@ -157,3 +157,58 @@ For example:
/path/to/dpdk-testpmd
--vdev=virtio_user0,path=/dev/vhost-net,queues=2,queue_size=1024 -- \
-i --tx-offloads=0x002c --enable-lro --txq=2 --rxq=2 --txd=1024
--rxd=1024
+
+Creating Virtio-User Ports within an Application
+------------------------------------------------
+
+To use virtio-user ports within an application,
+it is not necessary to explicitly initialize those ports using EAL arguments
at startup.
+Instead, one can use the generic EAL API
+`rte_eal_hotplug_add
<https://doc.dpdk.org/api/rte__dev_8h.html#ad32e8eebf1f81ef9f290cb296b0c90bb>`_
+function to create a new instance at startup.
+For example, to create a basic virtio-user port, the following code could be
used:
+
+.. code-block:: C
+
+ rte_eal_hotplug_add("vdev", "virtio_user0", "path=/dev/vhost-net");
+
+A fuller code example is shown below, where a virtio-user port, and hence
kernel netdev,
+is created for each NIC port discovered by DPDK.
+Each virtio-user port is given the MAC address of its matching physical port
+(assuming app was run without vdev args on commandline, so all ports
auto-discovered are HW ones).
+These new virtio-user netdevs will appear in the kernel port listings as
``virtio_user0``,
+``virtio_user1``, etc.,
+based on the names passed in as ``iface=`` via the ``portargs`` parameter.
+
+.. code-block:: C
+
+ nb_ports = rte_eth_dev_count_avail();
+
+ /* Create a vhost_user port for each physical port */
+ unsigned port_count = 0;
+ RTE_ETH_FOREACH_DEV(portid) {
+ char portname[32];
+ char portargs[256];
+ struct rte_ether_addr addr = {0};
+
+ /* don't create virtio_user ports for other virtio_user ports */
+ if (++port_count > nb_ports)
+ break;
+
+ /* get mac address of physical port to use as mac of virtio_user port
*/
+ rte_eth_macaddr_get(portid, &addr);
+
+ /* set the name and arguments */
+ snprintf(portname, sizeof(portname), "virtio_user%u", portid);
+ snprintf(portargs, sizeof(portargs),
+ "path=/dev/vhost-net,queues=1,queue_size=%u,iface=%s,mac="
RTE_ETHER_ADDR_PRT_FMT,
+ RX_RING_SIZE, portname, RTE_ETHER_ADDR_BYTES(&addr));
+
+ /* add the vdev for virtio_user */
+ if (rte_eal_hotplug_add("vdev", portname, portargs) < 0)
+ rte_exit(EXIT_FAILURE, "Cannot create paired port for port %u\n",
portid);
+
+ }
+
+Once these virtio-user ports have been created in the loop, all ports, both
physical and virtual,
+may be initialized and used as normal in the application.
--
2.34.1
