[PATCH] doc: update warnings about primary/secondary process

Stephen Hemminger stephen at networkplumber.org
Wed Apr 8 17:28:08 CEST 2026


The existing documentation about primary/secondary requirements
is not strong enough; make it clear what the requirements are.
This may be obvious already to developers but not users.

Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <stephen at networkplumber.org>
---
 doc/guides/prog_guide/multi_proc_support.rst | 11 ++++++++---
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/guides/prog_guide/multi_proc_support.rst b/doc/guides/prog_guide/multi_proc_support.rst
index a73918a5da..e0ba72c294 100644
--- a/doc/guides/prog_guide/multi_proc_support.rst
+++ b/doc/guides/prog_guide/multi_proc_support.rst
@@ -25,10 +25,15 @@ after a primary process has already configured the hugepage shared memory for th
 
 .. note::
 
-    Secondary processes should run alongside primary process with same DPDK version.
+    Secondary processes run alongside the primary process and:
+
+    * MUST have equivalent permissions and trust level.
+      There is no privilege separation between primary and secondary processes.
+    * MUST be running the same DPDK version.
+    * MUST be passed the same device access arguments (allow and block options).
+    * MUST share the same mount and PID namespaces. Running a secondary process
+      in a different container namespace from the primary is not supported.
 
-    Secondary processes which requires access to physical devices in Primary process, must
-    be passed with the same allow and block options.
 
 To support these two process types, and other multi-process setups described later,
 two additional command-line parameters are available to the EAL:
-- 
2.53.0



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