2. QEMU/KVM Support in PF_RING ZC¶
This guide shows how to run a consumer reading from a ZC queue on a KVM virtual machine.
2.1. Prerequisites¶
- Qemu >= 1.5.1 (latest stable from http://wiki.qemu.org/Download is supported)
- KVM support in Linux kernel (kvm_intel module)
In order to run a PF_RING ZC slave application on top of a QEMU/KVM Virtual Machine, follow these simple steps:
- Run the Virtual Machine specifying a monitor socket to QEMU:
(H) qemu ... -chardev socket,path=/tmp/qmp0,server,nowait,id=qmp0 -mon chardev=qmp0,mode=control
(there are some ready-to-use scripts under scripts/, see next section for more informations)
- Load the hotplug module, the virtio_console module and the uio module in the guest.
(G) modprobe acpiphp
(G) modprobe virtio_console
(G) modprobe uio
(G) cd uio_kernel_module; make; insmod uio_ivshmem.ko
- Run the PF_RING ZC master application in the host, listing the monitor sockets of all the running Virtual Machines:
(H) zbalance_ipc -i zc:eth1 -c 99 -n 2 -m 0 -Q /tmp/qmp0,/tmp/qmp1
Alternatively, run a traffic generator in the host, specifying the monitor socket of the running Virtual Machine where a consumer application will receive the generated traffic:
(H) zsend -c 99 -Q /tmp/qmp0
- Run the PF_RING ZC slave application in the guest (both read packets from the specified queues):
(G1) zcount_ipc -i 0 -c 99 -u
(G2) zcount_ipc -i 1 -c 99 -u
2.2. Common Issues¶
If you have problems runnning zcount_ipc (or similar) on the guest with an error like this:
zcount_ipc -i 0 -c 99 -u
*** error mmap'ing uio memory region /dev/uio0: Invalid argument ***
dmesg | tail -n 1
[ 1971.854205] zcount_ipc:3520 map pfn expected mapping type uncached-minus for [mem 0x28000000-0x28000fff], got write-back
Edit in /etc/default/grub the line starting with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and append “nopat”, for example:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nopat"
Then run:
update-grub
2.3. How to create/boot a Qemu VM¶
Download latest stable Qemu (2.4.0):
wget http://wiki.qemu-project.org/download/qemu-2.4.0.tar.bz2
tar xvjf qemu-2.4.0.tar.bz2
cd qemu-2.4.0
Edit hw/misc/ivshmem.c commenting out line 303 (see http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/316785/):
//qemu_chr_fe_claim_no_fail(chr);
Configure/compile/install:
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/kvm
make; make install
Load the needed KVM and networking modules:
cd PF_RING/userland/examples_zc/scripts
./kvm-load.sh
Boot from a linux cdrom iso to install the OS: (the script looks for /root/ubuntu-12.04.2-server-amd64.iso, creating the virtual drive ubuntu-amd64.img, using eth1 for networking)
./vm-boot-cdrom.sh
A VNC client should be used to connect to the VM and setup networking for ssh access. Bridge and TUN/TAP support are needed for networking (bridge module, brctl and tunctl tools). After installation, boot the VM with:
./vm-boot.sh