Looking for guidance on handling VMXNET3 drivers

[Patrick Mahan]

On 2/13/26 9:45 AM, Patrick Mahan wrote:
> On 2/12/26 10:38 PM, Patrick Mahan wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> I've been help development a DPDK application that (mainly) runs on dedicated 
>> hardware (i40e NICS), Intel CPUs.  However, we have been asked to see if this 
>> can be run in the ESXi (VMware) environment.  This seemed fine as we have the 
>> VMXNET3 PMD and aside from some missing features, it seemed to work.
>>
>> Until we tried to down the port, using rte_eth_dev_set_down() API.  This API is 
>> returning -95 (EOPNOTSUPP) which I take to mean that its link state cannot be 
>> changed.
>>
> 
> Sorry, I mistakenly put the incorrect function name.  I meant 
> rte_eth_dev_set_link_down().
> 
> Patrick
> 
>> I checked the PMD documentation for this driver and cannot find any mention 
>> that this is a limitation.
>>
>> I've never looked at the linux implementation (which our older, pre-DPDK) uses 
>> but it allows the interface to be marked down.
>>
>> Is my only work-around to stop the device instead?

It looks like I must use rte_eth_dev_stop() as I see from the sources for the 
VMXNET3 PMD, that it is missing the dev_set_link_up and dev_set_link_down ops 
functions are missing.

Thanks,

Patrick