[dpdk-dev] [dpdk-users] Why packet_type is zero?

[Thomas Monjalon]

Thanks for reporting.

2015-11-10 15:46, Arseniy Zaostrovnykh:
> Is the pcap driver obsolete?

No

> L3fwd example(http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/sample_app_ug/l3_forward.html) 
> check the mbuf field packet_type, and in the zero case (which is a 
> default value, as far as I know) it does nothing. At the same time, only 
> few drivers even mention this field:
> 
> dpdk-2.1.0 $ grep packet_type drivers -Rl
>      drivers/net/enic/enic_main.c
>      drivers/net/e1000/igb_rxtx.c
>      drivers/net/ixgbe/ixgbe_rxtx.c
>      drivers/net/mlx4/mlx4.c
>      drivers/net/i40e/i40e_rxtx.c
>      drivers/net/mpipe/mpipe_tilegx.c
>      drivers/net/vmxnet3/vmxnet3_rxtx.c
>      drivers/net/fm10k/fm10k_rxtx.c
>      drivers/net/cxgbe/sge.c
> 
> And a PCap driver (drivers/net/pcap/rte_eth_pcap.c) specifically, does 
> not alter the field, so L3fwd application drops all packets.

The zero value is acceptable.
#define RTE_PTYPE_UNKNOWN                   0x00000000

Maybe a fix is required in the l3fwd example?
Or maybe it should be explicit that it works with only few drivers.

More generally, the packet type is not mandatory for drivers.
At a time we were talking about implementing a generic callback to
fill it. Or it can be filled in an application fallback with parsing.