This guide helps you build and install openNetVM.
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Make sure your NIC is supported by Intel DPDK by comparing the following command's ouptput against DPDK's supported NIC list.
lspci | awk '/net/ {print $1}' | xargs -i% lspci -ks %
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Check what operating system you have by typing:
uname -a
your Kernel version should be higher than 2.6.33.
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Install dependencies
Install the Linux Kernel headers package for your kernel version.
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) git bc gcc make pkg-config
If your distribution didn't come with Python or came with an earlier version, you will need to install Python 3 v3.4+.
See if Python is already installed with
python3 --version
Install Python with your distribution's package manager (Note: the command and package name may vary).
On Debian derivatives such as Ubuntu, use
apt
. Check the apt repository for the versions of Python available to you. Then, run the following command:sudo apt-get install python3
Verify that Python installed correctly with
python3 --version
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Assure your kernel supports uio
locate uio
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Install libnuma
sudo apt-get install libnuma-dev
If installing libnuma-dev fails, your package information may not be up to date. To fix this, run:
sudo apt-get update
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Download source code
git clone https://github.com/sdnfv/openNetVM cd openNetVM git checkout master
This will ensure you are on the stable,
master
branch. If you want to use the most recent but potentially buggy features, you can use the defaultdevelop
branch. -
Initialize DPDK submodule
git submodule sync git submodule update --init
From this point forward, this guide assumes that you are working out of the openNetVM source directory.
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Set environment variable ONVM_HOME to the path of the openNetVM source directory.
echo export ONVM_HOME=$(pwd) >> ~/.bashrc
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List DPDK supported architectures:
ls dpdk/config/
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Set environment variable RTE_SDK to the path of the DPDK library. Make sure that you are in the DPDK directory
cd dpdk echo export RTE_SDK=$(pwd) >> ~/.bashrc
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Set environment variable RTE_TARGET to the target architecture of your system. This is found in step 3.1
echo export RTE_TARGET=x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc >> ~/.bashrc
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Set environment variable ONVM_NUM_HUGEPAGES and ONVM_NIC_PCI.
ONVM_NUM_HUGEPAGES is a variable specifies how many hugepages are reserved by the user, default value of this is 1024, which could be set using:
echo export ONVM_NUM_HUGEPAGES=1024 >> ~/.bashrc
ONVM_NIC_PCI is a variable that specifies NIC ports to be bound to DPDK. If ONVM_NIC_PCI is not specified, the default action is to bind all non-active 10G NIC ports to DPDK. Note, NIC PCI device IDs may not be the same across all hosts. In that case, please retrieve this information for your host before setting the variable. (e.g., via
lspci
)export ONVM_NIC_PCI=" 07:00.0 07:00.1 "
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Source your shell rc file to set the environment variables:
source ~/.bashrc
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Disable ASLR since it makes sharing memory with NFs harder:
sudo sh -c "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space"
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Run the install script to compile DPDK and configure hugepages.
cd scripts ./install.sh
The install script will automatically run the environment setup script, which configures your local environment. This should be run once for every reboot, as it loads the appropraite kernel modules and can bind your NIC ports to the DPDK driver.
If
which python
shows not found in your environment, please linkpython
to Python3, e.g., vialink -s
oralias python=$(which python3)
.
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Enter DPDK HelloWorld directory and compile the application:
cd dpdk/examples/helloworld make
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Run the HelloWorld application
sudo ./build/helloworld -l 0,1 -n 1
If the last line of output is as such, then DPDK works
hello from core 1 hello from core 0
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Compile openNetVM manager and libraries
cd onvm make cd ..
Note: You may see the errors below upon compilation. Please ignore.
cat: ../openNetVM/onvm/lib/ABI_VERSION: No such file or directory found cat: ../openNetVM/onvm/onvm_nflib/ABI_VERSION: No such file or directory found
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Compile example NFs
cd examples make cd ..
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Run openNetVM manager
Run openNetVM manager to use 3 cores (1 for displaying statistics, 1 for handling TX queues, 1 for handling manager RX queues; set to cores 0, 1 and 2, respectively, by default), to use 1 NIC port (hexadecimal portmask), 0xF8 for the NF coremask (cores 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), and to use stdout for the statistics console:
./onvm/go.sh -k 1 -n 0xF8 -s stdout
You should see information regarding the NIC port that openNetVM is using, and openNetVM manager statistics will be displayed.
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Run speed_tester NF
To test the system, we will run the speed_tester example NF. This NF generates a buffer of packets, and sends them to itself to measure the speed of a single NF TX thread.
In a new shell, run this command to start the speed_tester, assigning it a service ID of 1, setting its destination service ID to 1, and creating an initial batch of 16000 packets (increasing the packet count from the default 128 is especially important if you run a chain of multiple NFs):
cd examples/speed_tester ./go.sh 1 -d 1 -c 16000
Once the NF's initialization is completed, you should see the NF display how many packets it is sending to itself. Go back to the manager to verify that
NF 1
is receiving data. If this is the case, the openNetVM is working correctly.
After a reboot, you can configure your environment again (load kernel modules and bind the NIC) by running the environment setup script.
Also, please double check if the environment variables from step 3 are initialized. If they are not, please go to step 3
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Setting up DPDK manually
Our install script helps configure DPDK by using its setup script. Sometimes, it's helpful to troubleshoot a problem by running DPDK's script directly to fix things like misconfigured igb_uio drivers or hugepage regions.
Here are the steps used to install the DPDK components needed by ONVM.
Run
dpdk/usertools/dpdk-setup.sh
then:-
Press [38] to compile x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc version
-
Press [45] to install igb_uio driver for Intel NICs
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Press [49] to setup 1024 2MB hugepages
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Press [51] to register the Ethernet ports
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Press [62] to quit the tool
After these steps, it should be possible to compile and run onvm.
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-
Huge Page Configuration
You can get information about the hugepage configuration with:
grep -i huge /proc/meminfo
If there is not enough or no free memory, there are a few reasons why:
-
The manager crashed, but an NF(s) is still running.
- In this case, either kill them manually by hitting Ctrl+C or run
sudo pkill NF_NAME
for every NF that you have ran.
- In this case, either kill them manually by hitting Ctrl+C or run
-
The manager and NFs are not running, but something crashed without freeing hugepages.
- To fix this, please run
sudo rm -rf /mnt/huge/*
to remove all files that contain hugepage data.
- To fix this, please run
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The above two cases are not met, something weird is happening:
- A reboot might fix this problem and free memory
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Binding the NIC to the DPDK Driver
You can check the current status of NIC port bindings with
sudo ./usertools/dpdk-devbind.py --status
Output similar to below will show what driver each NIC port is bound to.
Network devices using DPDK-compatible driver ============================================ <none> Network devices using kernel driver =================================== 0000:05:00.0 '82576 Gigabit Network Connection' if=eth0 drv=igb unused=igb_uio *Active* 0000:05:00.1 '82576 Gigabit Network Connection' if=eth1 drv=igb unused=igb_uio 0000:07:00.0 '82599EB 10-Gigabit SFI/SFP+ Network Connection' if=eth2 drv=ixgbe unused=igb_uio *Active* 0000:07:00.1 '82599EB 10-Gigabit SFI/SFP+ Network Connection' if=eth3 drv=ixgbe unused=igb_uio
In our example above, we see two 10G capable NIC ports that we could use with description
'82599EB 10-Gigabit SFI/SFP+ Network Connection'
.One of the two NIC ports,
07:00.0
, is active shown by the*Active*
at the end of the line. Since the Linux Kernel is currently using that port, network interfaceeth2
, we will not be able to use it with openNetVM. We must first disable the network interface in the Kernel, and then proceed to bind the NIC port to the DPDK Kernel module,igb_uio
:sudo ifconfig eth2 down
Rerun the status command,
./usertools/dpdk-devbind.py --status
, to see that it is not active anymore. Once that is done, proceed to bind the NIC port to the DPDK Kenrel module:sudo ./usertools/dpdk-devbind.py -b igb_uio 07:00.0
Check the status again,
./usertools/dpdk-devbind.py --status
, and assure the output is similar to our example below:Network devices using DPDK-compatible driver ============================================ 0000:07:00.0 '82599EB 10-Gigabit SFI/SFP+ Network Connection' drv=igb_uio unused=ixgbe Network devices using kernel driver =================================== 0000:05:00.0 '82576 Gigabit Network Connection' if=eth0 drv=igb unused=igb_uio *Active* 0000:05:00.1 '82576 Gigabit Network Connection' if=eth1 drv=igb unused=igb_uio 0000:07:00.1 '82599EB 10-Gigabit SFI/SFP+ Network Connection' if=eth3 drv=ixgbe unused=igb_uio
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Exporting $ONVM_HOME
If the setup_environment.sh script fails because the environment variable ONVM_HOME is not set, please run this command:
export ONVM_HOME=$ONVM_HOME:CHANGEME_TO_THE_PATH_TO_ONVM_DIR
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Poor Performance
If you are not getting the expected level of performance, try these:
- Ensure the manager and NFs are all given different core numbers. Use cores on the same sockets for best results.
- If running a long chain of NFs, ensure that there are sufficient packets to keep the chain busy. If using locally generated packets (i.e., the Speed Tester NFs) then use the
-c
flag to increase the number of packets created. For best results, run multiple Speed Tester NFs, or use an external generator like pktgen.