libvirt/docs/drvnodedev.html.in
Erik Skultety a94d431dc4 docs: Provide a nodedev driver stub documentation
There's lot more to document about the nodedev driver, besides PCI and
SR-IOV (even this might need to be extended), but let's start small-ish
and at least have a page for it linked from the drivers.html.

Signed-off-by: Erik Skultety <eskultet@redhat.com>
2017-04-26 15:56:11 +02:00

190 lines
7.4 KiB
XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<body>
<h1>Host device management</h1>
<p>
Libvirt provides management of both physical and virtual host devices
(historically also referred to as node devices) like USB, PCI, SCSI, and
network devices. This also includes various virtualization capabilities
which the aforementioned devices provide for utilization, for example
SR-IOV, NPIV, DRM, etc.
</p>
<p>
The node device driver provides means to list and show details about host
devices (<code>virsh nodedev-list</code>,
<code>virsh nodedev-dumpxml</code>), which are generic and can be used
with all devices. It also provides means to create and destroy devices
(<code>virsh nodedev-create</code>, <code>virsh nodedev-destroy</code>)
which are meant to be used to create virtual devices, currently only
supported by NPIV
(<a href="http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/NPIV_in_libvirt">more info about NPIV)</a>).
Devices on the host system are arranged in a tree-like hierarchy, with
the root node being called <code>computer</code>. The node device driver
supports two backends to manage the devices, HAL and udev, with the former
being deprecated in favour of the latter.
</p>
<p>
The generic format of a host device XML can be seen below.
To identify a device both within the host and the device tree hierarchy,
the following elements are used:
</p>
<dl>
<dt><code>name</code></dt>
<dd>
The device's name will be generated by libvirt using the subsystem,
like pci and the device's sysfs basename.
</dd>
<dt><code>path</code></dt>
<dd>
Fully qualified sysfs path to the device.
</dd>
<dt><code>parent</code></dt>
<dd>
This element identifies the parent node in the device hierarchy. The
value of the element will correspond with the device parent's
<code>name</code> element or <code>computer</code> if the device does
not have any parent.
</dd>
<dt><code>driver</code></dt>
<dd>
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.
</dd>
<dt><code>capability</code></dt>
<dd>
Describes the device in terms of feature support. The element has one
mandatory attribute <code>type</code> the value of which determines
the type of the device. Currently recognized values for the attribute
are:
<code>system</code>,
<code>pci</code>,
<code>usb</code>,
<code>usb_device</code>,
<code>net</code>,
<code>scsi</code>,
<code>scsi_host</code> (<span class="since">Since 0.4.7</span>),
<code>fc_host</code>,
<code>vports</code>,
<code>scsi_target</code> (<span class="since">Since 0.7.3</span>),
<code>storage</code> (<span class="since">Since 1.0.4</span>),
<code>scsi_generic</code> (<span class="since">Since 1.0.7</span>),
<code>drm</code> (<span class="since">Since 3.1.0</span>), and
This element can be nested in which case it further specifies a
device's capability. Refer to specific device types to see more values
for the <code>type</code> attribute which are exclusive.
</dd>
</dl>
<h2>Basic structure of a node device</h2>
<pre>
&lt;device&gt;
&lt;name&gt;pci_0000_00_17_0&lt;/name&gt;
&lt;path&gt;/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:17.0&lt;/path&gt;
&lt;parent&gt;computer&lt;/parent&gt;
&lt;driver&gt;
&lt;name&gt;ahci&lt;/name&gt;
&lt;/driver&gt;
&lt;capability type='pci'&gt;
...
&lt;/capability&gt;
&lt;/device&gt;</pre>
<ul id="toc"/>
<h2><a name="PCI">PCI host devices</a></h2>
<dl>
<dt><code>capability</code></dt>
<dd>
When used as top level element, the supported values for the
<code>type</code> attribute are <code>pci</code> and
<code>phys_function</code> (see <a href="#SRIOVCap">SR-IOV below</a>).
</dd>
</dl>
<pre>
&lt;device&gt;
&lt;name&gt;pci_0000_04_00_1&lt;/name&gt;
&lt;path&gt;/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/0000:04:00.1&lt;/path&gt;
&lt;parent&gt;pci_0000_00_06_0&lt;/parent&gt;
&lt;driver&gt;
&lt;name&gt;igb&lt;/name&gt;
&lt;/driver&gt;
&lt;capability type='pci'&gt;
&lt;domain&gt;0&lt;/domain&gt;
&lt;bus&gt;4&lt;/bus&gt;
&lt;slot&gt;0&lt;/slot&gt;
&lt;function&gt;1&lt;/function&gt;
&lt;product id='0x10c9'&gt;82576 Gigabit Network Connection&lt;/product&gt;
&lt;vendor id='0x8086'&gt;Intel Corporation&lt;/vendor&gt;
&lt;iommuGroup number='15'&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x00' function='0x1'/&gt;
&lt;/iommuGroup&gt;
&lt;numa node='0'/&gt;
&lt;pci-express&gt;
&lt;link validity='cap' port='1' speed='2.5' width='2'/&gt;
&lt;link validity='sta' speed='2.5' width='2'/&gt;
&lt;/pci-express&gt;
&lt;/capability&gt;
&lt;/device&gt;</pre>
<p>
The XML format for a PCI device stays the same for any further
capabilities it supports, a single nested <code>&lt;capability&gt;</code>
element will be included for each capability the device supports.
</p>
<h3><a name="SRIOVCap">SR-IOV capability</a></h3>
<p>
Single root input/output virtualization (SR-IOV) allows sharing of the
PCIe resources by multiple virtual environments. That is achieved by
slicing up a single full-featured physical resource called physical
function (PF) into multiple devices called virtual functions (VFs) sharing
their configuration with the underlying PF. Despite the SR-IOV
specification, the amount of VFs that can be created on a PF varies among
manufacturers.
</p>
<p>
Suppose the NIC <a href="#PCI">above</a> was also SR-IOV capable, it would
also include a nested
<code>&lt;capability&gt;</code> element enumerating all virtual
functions available on the physical device (physical port) like in the
example below.
</p>
<pre>
&lt;capability type='pci'&gt;
...
&lt;capability type='virt_functions' maxCount='7'&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x10' function='0x1'/&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x10' function='0x3'/&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x10' function='0x5'/&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x10' function='0x7'/&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x11' function='0x1'/&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x11' function='0x3'/&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x11' function='0x5'/&gt;
&lt;/capability&gt;
...
&lt;/capability&gt;</pre>
<p>
A SR-IOV child device on the other hand, would then report its top level
capability type as a <code>phys_function</code> instead:
</p>
<pre>
&lt;device&gt;
...
&lt;capability type='phys_function'&gt;
&lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/&gt;
&lt;/capability&gt;
...
&lt;device&gt;</pre>
</body>
</html>