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Mellanox ConnectX-3 dual port SRIOV NICs present a bit of a challenge
when assigning one of their VFs to a guest using VFIO device
assignment.
These NICs have only a single PCI PF device, and that single PF has
two netdevs sharing the single PCI address - one for port 1 and one
for port 2. When a VF is created it can also have 2 netdevs, or it can
be setup in "single port" mode, where the VF has only a single netdev,
and that netdev is connected either to port 1 or to port 2.
When the VF is created in dual port mode, you get/set the MAC
address/vlan tag for the port 1 VF by sending a netlink message to the
PF's port1 netdev, and you get/set the MAC address/vlan tag for the
port 2 VF by sending a netlink message to the PF's port 2 netdev. (Of
course libvirt doesn't have any way to describe MAC/vlan info for 2
ports in a single hostdev interface, so that's a bit of a moot point)
When the VF is created in single port mode, you can *set* the MAC/vlan
info by sending a netlink message to *either* PF netdev - the driver
is smart enough to understand that there's only a single netdev, and
set the MAC/vlan for that netdev. When you want to *get* it, however,
the driver is more accurate - it will return 00:00:00:00:00:00 for the
MAC if you request it from the port 1 PF netdev when the VF was
configured to be single port on port 2, or if you request if from the
port 2 PF netdev when the VF was configured to be single port on port
1.
Based on this information, when *getting* the MAC/vlan info (to save
the original setting prior to assignment), we determine the correct PF
netdev by matching phys_port_id between VF and PF.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: this implies that to do PCI device assignment of the
VFs on dual port Mellanox cards using <interface type='hostdev'>
(i.e. if you want the MAC address/vlan tag to be set), not only must
the VFs be configured in single port mode, but also the VFs *must* be
bound to the host VF net driver, and libvirt must use managed='yes')
By the time libvirt is ready to set the new MAC/vlan tag, the VF has
already been unbound from the host net driver and bound to
vfio-pci. This isn't problematic though because, as stated earlier,
when a VF is created in single port mode, commands to configure it can
be sent to either the port 1 PF netdev or the port 2 PF netdev.
When it is time to restore the original MAC/vlan tag, again the VF
will *not* be bound to a host net driver, so it won't be possible to
learn from sysfs whether to use the port 1 or port 2 PF netdev for the
netlink commands. And again, it doesn't matter which netdev you
use. However, we must keep in mind that we saved the original settings
to a file called "${PF}_${VFNUM}". To solve this problem, we just
check for the existence of ${PF1}_${VFNUM} and ${PF2}_${VFNUM}, and
use whichever one we find (since we know that only one can be there)
Libvirt API for virtualization
Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.
For some of these hypervisors, it provides a stateful management daemon which runs on the virtualization host allowing access to the API both by non-privileged local users and remote users.
Layered packages provide bindings of the libvirt C API into other languages including Python, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, OCaml, as well as mappings into object systems such as GObject, CIM and SNMP.
Further information about the libvirt project can be found on the website:
License
The libvirt C API is distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General
Public License, version 2.1 (or later). Some parts of the code that are
not part of the C library may have the more restrictive GNU General
Public License, version 2.1 (or later). See the files COPYING.LESSER
and COPYING for full license terms & conditions.
Installation
Libvirt uses the GNU Autotools build system, so in general can be built and installed with the usual commands. For example, to build in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make
$ sudo make install
While to build & install as an unprivileged user
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
$ make
$ make install
The libvirt code relies on a large number of 3rd party libraries. These will
be detected during execution of the configure script and a summary printed
which lists any missing (optional) dependencies.
Contributing
The libvirt project welcomes contributions in many ways. For most components the best way to contribute is to send patches to the primary development mailing list. Further guidance on this can be found on the website:
https://libvirt.org/contribute.html
Contact
The libvirt project has two primary mailing lists:
- libvirt-users@redhat.com (for user discussions)
- libvir-list@redhat.com (for development only)
Further details on contacting the project are available on the website: