>> on testing this out the biggest gap I see is that we need a documentation
>> update for it. In V3 can you please update the FreeBSD GSG doc with some
>> details about how to use this feature.
>>
>> Also, on first run using testpmd, the application failed to start, as I was
>> missing a file-prefix option. At minimum I think the code needs to default
>> the file-prefix on BSD to "contigmem0", so that when running a standalone
>> app as before, it "just works". An idea for backward compatibility here
>> that may help us, is to omit the "0" for contigmem0 device. That would mean
>> that an older DPDK app will work with a newer kernel driver, and vice
>> versa.
>>
>> Beyond that, I'm not sure how to get multiple processes working right now
>> (hence the doc update request!). When I run a second instance of DPDK on my
>> system with "--file-prefix=contigmem1", I get errors about the shared
>> config file in "/var/run/dpdk/rte/config".
>>
> Inspiration struck me just after I hit send on this email. Removing the
> #ifdefs in eal_common_options.c allows me to run two processes in
> parallel just fine.
>
> I think we need to consider how to rework this to avoid using the
> file-prefix argument for the contigmem files. Not sure what a better scheme
> is, though. Do you have any ideas or suggestions on this from your
> experience doing up this patch?
Thanks for testing I'll fix these pieces up. I'll add a default to
/dev/contigmem0, it'll fail to get the lock in normal use so it shouldn't be a
problem.
I have done basically all of my testing through vpp, I can't say I've ever had
much luck getting testpmd to do more than just start up. I resused the exist
file-prefix interface as it allowed the smallest change to vpp[1]. I'm not
normally a fan of such overloading, but it isn't so bad in this case.
I tried adding a compatible patch with the old /dev/contigmem and sysctl API,
but it added a lot to the driver to handle a case I'm not sure we need.
I think my next steps should be:
- add a default for the file prefix
- documentation for the new option
with those I'll try to post a v3 patch this week.
- Tom
[1]:
https://github.com/adventureloop/vpp/commit/d49be6e1958016c2d680c2e06e23c42988911aa7
