Node devices XML format

Node Device XML

There are several libvirt functions, all with the prefix virNodeDevice, which deal with management of host devices that can be handed to guests via passthrough as <hostdev> elements in the domain XML. These devices are represented as a hierarchy, where a device on a bus has a parent of the bus controller device; the root of the hierarchy is the node named "computer".

When represented in XML, a node device uses the top-level device element, with the following elements present according to the type of device:

name
The name for this device. The name will be alphanumeric, with words separated by underscore. For many devices, the name is just the bus type and address, as in "pci_0000_00_02_1" or "usb_1_5_3", but some devices are able to provide more specific names, such as "net_eth1_00_27_13_6a_fe_00". This is a read-only field that is reported by the device driver. If this element is set when defining a new device, it will be ignored.
path
Fully qualified sysfs path to the device. This is a read-only field that is reported by the device driver. If this element is set when defining a new device, it will be ignored.
parent
This element identifies the parent node in the device hierarchy. The value of the element will correspond with the device parent's name element or computer if the device does not have any parent.
driver
This elements reports the driver in use for this device. The presence of this element in the output XML depends on whether the underlying device manager (most likely udev) exposes information about the driver.
devnode
This node appears for each associated /dev special file. A mandatory attribute type specify the kind of file path, which may be either dev for the main name, or link for additional symlinks.
capability
This node appears for each capability that libvirt associates with a node. A mandatory attribute type lists which category the device belongs to, and controls which further subelements will be present to describe the node:
system
Describes the overall host. Sub-elements include:
product
If present, a simple text string giving the product name of the system.
hardware
Describes the hardware of the system, including sub-elements for vendor, version, serial, and uuid.
firmware
Describes the firmware of the system, including sub-elements for vendor, version, and release_date.
pci
Describes a device on the host's PCI bus. Sub-elements include:
class
Optional element for combined class, subclass and programming interface codes as 6-digit hexadecimal number. Since 5.2.0
domain
Which domain the device belongs to.
bus
Which bus within the domain.
slot
Which slot within the bus.
function
Which function within the slot.
product
Product details from the device ROM, including an attribute id with the hexadecimal product id, and an optional text description of that id.
vendor
Vendor details from the device ROM, including an attribute id with the hexadecimal vendor id, and an optional text name of that vendor.
iommuGroup
This optional element describes the "IOMMU group" this device belongs to. If the element exists, it has a mandatory number attribute which tells the group number used for management of the group (all devices in group "n" will be found in "/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/n"). It will also have a list of address subelements, each containing the PCI address of a device in the same group. The toplevel device will itself be included in this list.
capability
This optional element can occur multiple times. If it exists, it has a mandatory type attribute which will be set to:
phys_function
That means there will be a single address subelement which contains the PCI address of the SRIOV Physical Function (PF) that is the parent of this device (and this device is, by implication, an SRIOV Virtual Function (VF)).
virt_functions
In this case this device is an SRIOV PF, and the capability element will have a list of address subelements, one for each VF on this PF. If the host system supports reporting it (via the "sriov_maxvfs" file in the device's sysfs directory) the capability element will also have an attribute named maxCount which is the maximum number of SRIOV VFs supported by this device, which could be higher than the number of VFs that are curently active since 1.3.0; in this case, even if there are currently no active VFs the virtual_functions capabililty will still be shown.
pci-bridge or cardbus-bridge
This shows merely that the lower 7 bits of PCI header type have either value of 1 or 2 respectively. Usually this means such device cannot be used for PCI passthrough. Since 1.3.3
mdev_types
This device is capable of creating mediated devices, and the capability will contain a list of type elements, which list all mdev types supported on the physical device. Since 3.4.0 Each type element has a single id attribute that holds an official vendor-supplied identifier for the type. It supports the following sub-elements:
name
The name element holds a vendor-supplied code name for the given mediated device type. This is an optional element.
deviceAPI
The value of this element describes how an instance of the given type will be presented to the guest by the VFIO framework.
availableInstances
This element reports the current state of resource allocation. In other words, how many instances of the given type can still be successfully created on the physical device.
numa
This optional element contains information on the PCI device with respect to NUMA. For example, the optional node attribute tells which NUMA node is the PCI device associated with.
pci-express
This optional element contains information on PCI Express part of the device. For example, it can contain a child element link which addresses the PCI Express device's link. While a device has its own capabilities (validity='cap'), the actual run time capabilities are negotiated on the device initialization (validity='sta'). The link element then contains three attributes: port which says in which port is the device plugged in, speed (in GigaTransfers per second) and width for the number of lanes used. Since the port can't be negotiated, it's not exposed in ./pci-express/link/[@validity='sta'].
usb_device
Describes a device on the host's USB bus, based on its location within the bus. Sub-elements include:
bus
Which bus the device belongs to.
device
Which device within the bus.
product
Product details from the device ROM, including an attribute id with the hexadecimal product id, and an optional text description of that id.
vendor
Vendor details from the device ROM, including an attribute id with the hexadecimal vendor id, and an optional text name of that vendor.
usb
Describes a USB device, based on its advertised driver interface. Sub-elements include:
number
The device number.
class
The device class.
subclass
The device subclass.
protocol
The device protocol.
description
If present, a description of the device.
net
Describes a device capable for use as a network interface. Sub-elements include:
interface
The interface name tied to this device.
address
If present, the MAC address of the device.
link
Optional to reflect the status of the link. It has two optional attributes: speed in Mbits per second and state to tell the state of the link. So far, the whole element is just for output, not setting.
feature
If present, the hw offloads supported by this network interface. Possible features are:
rx
rx-checksumming
tx
tx-checksumming
sg
scatter-gather
tso
tcp-segmentation-offload
ufo
udp-fragmentation-offload
gso
generic-segmentation-offload
gro
generic-receive-offload
lro
large-receive-offload
rxvlan
rx-vlan-offload
txvlan
tx-vlan-offload
ntuple
ntuple-filters
rxhash
receive-hashing
rdma
remote-direct-memory-access
txudptnl
tx-udp-tunnel-segmentation
switchdev
kernel-forward-plane-offload
capability
A network protocol exposed by the device, where the attribute type can be "80203" for IEEE 802.3, or "80211" for various flavors of IEEE 802.11.
scsi_host
Describes a SCSI host device. Sub-elements include:
host
The SCSI host number.
unique_id
On input, this optionally provides the value from the 'unique_id' file found in the scsi_host's directory. To view the values of all 'unique_id' files, use find -H /sys/class/scsi_host/host{0..9}/unique_id | xargs grep '[0-9]'. On output, if the unique_id file exists, the value from the file will be displayed. This can be used in order to help uniquely identify the scsi_host adapter in a Storage Pool. Since 1.2.7
capability
Current capabilities include "vports_ops" (indicates vport operations are supported) and "fc_host". "vport_ops" could contain two optional sub-elements: vports, and max_vports. vports shows the number of vport in use. max_vports shows the maximum vports the HBA supports. "fc_host" implies following sub-elements: wwnn, wwpn, and optionally fabric_wwn.
scsi
Describes a SCSI device. Sub-elements include:
host
The SCSI host containing the device.
bus
The bus within the host.
target
The target within the bus.
lun
The lun within the target.
type
The type of SCSI device.
storage
Describes a device usable for storage. Sub-elements include:
block
A block device file name that accesses the storage present on the device.
bus
If present, the name of the bus the device is found on.
drive_type
The type of the drive, such as "disk" or "cdrom".
model
Any model information available from the device.
vendor
Any vendor information available from the device.
serial
Any serial number information available from the device.
size
For fixed-size storage, the amount of storage available.
capability
If present, an additional capability is listed via the attribute type. Current capabilities include "hotpluggable" and "removable", with the latter implying the following sub-elements: media_available (0 or 1), media_size, and media_label.
drm
Describes a Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) device. Sub-elements include:
type
The type of DRM device. Could be primary, control or render.
mdev
Describes a mediated device. Since 3.4.0 Sub-elements include:
type
Describes a mediated device type which acts as an abstract template defining a resource allocation for instances of this device type. The element has one attribute id which holds an official vendor-supplied identifier for the type.
iommuGroup
This element supports a single attribute number which holds the IOMMU group number to which the mediated device belongs. This is a read-only field that is reported by the device driver.
attr
This optional element can occur multiple times. It represents a vendor-specific attribute that is used to configure this mediated device. It has two required attributes: name and value.
ccw
Describes a Command Channel Word (CCW) device commonly found on the S390 architecture. Sub-elements include:
cssid
The channel subsystem identifier.
ssid
The subchannel-set identifier.
devno
The device number.

Examples

The following are some example node device XML outputs:

<device>
  <name>computer</name>
  <capability type='system'>
    <product>2241B36</product>
    <hardware>
      <vendor>LENOVO</vendor>
      <version>ThinkPad T500</version>
      <serial>R89055N</serial>
      <uuid>c9488981-5049-11cb-9c1c-993d0230b4cd</uuid>
    </hardware>
    <firmware>
      <vendor>LENOVO</vendor>
      <version>6FET82WW (3.12 )</version>
      <release_date>11/26/2009</release_date>
    </firmware>
  </capability>
</device>

<device>
  <name>net_eth1_00_27_13_6a_fe_00</name>
  <parent>pci_0000_00_19_0</parent>
  <capability type='net'>
    <interface>eth1</interface>
    <address>00:27:13:6a:fe:00</address>
    <capability type='80203'/>
  </capability>
</device>

<device>
  <name>pci_0000_02_00_0</name>
  <path>/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:04.0/0000:02:00.0</path>
  <parent>pci_0000_00_04_0</parent>
  <driver>
    <name>igb</name>
  </driver>
  <capability type='pci'>
    <class>0x020000</class>
    <domain>0</domain>
    <bus>2</bus>
    <slot>0</slot>
    <function>0</function>
    <product id='0x10c9'>82576 Gigabit Network Connection</product>
    <vendor id='0x8086'>Intel Corporation</vendor>
    <capability type='virt_functions'>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x10' function='0x0'/>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x10' function='0x2'/>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x10' function='0x4'/>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x10' function='0x6'/>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x11' function='0x0'/>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x11' function='0x2'/>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x11' function='0x4'/>
    </capability>
    <iommuGroup number='12'>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
      <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x00' function='0x1'/>
    </iommuGroup>
    <pci-express>
      <link validity='cap' port='1' speed='2.5' width='1'/>
      <link validity='sta' speed='2.5' width='1'/>
    </pci-express>
  </capability>
</device>