[dpdk-dev] Kernel Module dependency in DPDK 18.05-rc5 and earlier DPDK releases

[Kevin Wilson]

Thanks, Thomas.

Actually there is an EAL rte_eal_check_module() method which does this exactly:
http://dpdk.org/browse/dpdk/tree/lib/librte_eal/linuxapp/eal/eal.c#n1089
It is declared in eal_private.h.

Is it reasonable to send a patch which moves the decalartion to eal.h
instead so PMDs can use it in their probe() method ?

Apart from it -  So is there any practical effect for using the
RTE_PMD_REGISTER_KMOD_DEP() ? or is it only a sort of declarative
macro, saying that the PMD is dependent on the specified kernel
modules ? In the past - did it really ever check for dependency and
shouted back
when the required modules specified in the RTE_PMD_REGISTER_KMOD_DEP()
macro were not found ?

Regards,
KW


On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 2:21 PM, Thomas Monjalon <thomas at monjalon.net> wrote:
> 25/05/2018 11:55, Kevin Wilson:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am facing the following issue in DPDK 18.05-rc5 (I saw it also with earlier
>> releases of DPDK from the last year). The issue is with defining
>> dependency on a kernel module in a PMD.
>> I want to develop a PMD which requiers that before running DPDK app which
>> uses this PMD, a specified kernel module is required to be insmoded.
>> I tried to add a call to RTE_PMD_REGISTER_KMOD_DEP in my PMD,
>> specifying a required
>> kernel module, and I expected that when calling a DPDK app which uses
>> this PMD it will shout that such a kernel module is not loaded, but this did not
>> happen.
>
> No such check is implemented currently.
> You can try to implement a check in EAL in the probing function.
>
>
>