[dpdk-dev] [PATCH] vfio: open VFIO container at startup rather than during init

[Burakov, Anatoly]

Hi Thomas,

> Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH] vfio: open VFIO container at startup rather
> than during init
> 
> > Signed-off-by: Anatoly Burakov <anatoly.burakov at intel.com>
> 
> Please Anatoly, could you provide a text explaining what was broken and
> why you fixed it this way?

What was broken was if, for some reason, VFIO is loaded but the user can't initialize it (an example would be wrong permissions, or unsupported IOMMU type, which is what Bruce seems to be having... which shouldn't happen as far as I know, but there's nothing I can do on DPDK's side to fix this as this is the kernel reporting wrong kind of IOMMU type), DPDK would fail to load. The fix makes DPDK simply not try VFIO support at all if the container cannot be opened for some reason.

Best regards,
Anatoly Burakov
DPDK SW Engineer