[dpdk-users] Problems using DPDK within CORE emulations running on Ubuntu 18.04 VMs

[Templin (US), Fred L]

Hi, I am running Ubuntu 18.04 in a VM running on VirtualBox. I have built and
installed DPDK-20.11 from sources and had no troubles building by following
the Getting Started Guide for Linux instructions:

http://doc.dpdk.org/guides/linux_gsg/intro.html

Next, within the Ubuntu VM I run the CORE network emulator:

https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Our-Work/Areas-of-Research/Information-Technology/NCS/CORE/

I have a simple two-node network setup with two CORE vnodes connected
via a network switch, and verified that I can ping between the two nodes.
Now, I want to experiment with the DPDK-20.11 "ip_fragmentation" and
"ip_reassembly" example programs (which I was able to build successfully)
but it appears that these example programs require ports to be mapped.

So, I skipped ahead to Section 5 of the Getting Started Guide for Linux
("Linux Drivers") and tried to follow the instructions in Section 5.5. on
"Binding and Unbinding Network Ports to/from the Kernel Modules" by
typing commands into one of the CORE vnode shell windows. The text
at the end of this message shows the commands I typed and the output
I was shown in response. In particular, the "dpdk-devbind.py --status"
script does not appear to show a usable map of my CORE vnode
network interfaces, and attempts to bind were unsuccessful.

Has anyone ever run DPDK out of a CORE vnode before and/or can
you tell me what steps are needed to be able to bind CORE vnode
interfaces so that they can be used by DPDK? Or, is DPDK simply
incompatible with virtualization environments.

Another question - can DPDK be run over loopback interfaces?

Thanks - Fred

---

Script started on 2021-04-12 09:54:19-0700
root at n1: pwd
/home/fltemplin/src/DPDK/dpdk-20.11/usertools
root at n1: ip link sho
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
5: eth0 at if6: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:00:00:aa:00:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0
root at n1: sudo modprobe vfio-pci
root at n1: ip link sho
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
5: eth0 at if6: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:00:00:aa:00:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0
root at n1: ./dpdk-devbind.py --status

Network devices using kernel driver
===================================
0000:00:03.0 '82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller 100e' if= drv=e1000 unused=vfio-pci 
0000:00:08.0 '82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller 100e' if= drv=e1000 unused=vfio-pci 

No 'Baseband' devices detected
==============================

No 'Crypto' devices detected
============================

No 'Eventdev' devices detected
==============================

No 'Mempool' devices detected
=============================

No 'Compress' devices detected
==============================

No 'Misc (rawdev)' devices detected
===================================

No 'Regex' devices detected
===========================
root at n1: exit

Script done on 2021-04-12 09:55:41-0700