[dpdk-users] Mellanox 100G NIC, VF SR-IOV, docker container, EAL could not detect the device

[Adrien Mazarguil]

On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 01:01:58AM +0000, Wu, Xiaoban wrote:
> Hi Adrien,
> 
> 
> Thanks very much for your reply.
> 
> 
> However, after the -w option is used, the EAL still could not find the VF devices.
> 
> $dpdk-app -c 0x01 --socket-mem=128,128 --file-prefix="docker1" -w 0000:83:00.1
> 
> 
> EAL: Detected 12 lcore(s)
> EAL: Probing VFIO support...
> EAL: VFIO support initialized
> PMD: bnxt_rte_pmd_init() called for (null)
> Error, rte_eth_dev_configure() returns negative!

I didn't take Docker into account. Since there is no VM involved, you must
*not* bind the devices to vfio-pci (do not run dpdk-devbind.py, no need to
even modprobe vfio-pci).

With mlx4/mlx5, doing so is only necessary when you intent to assign devices
to a VM, otherwise the spawned VFs must remain managed by their original
kernel drivers. You likely need to transfer the associated netdevices to
your Docker instance for this to work though. You'll likely need to somehow
transfer the related IB instances as well.

At least that's the theory, I've never personally tried to use Docker with
mlx4/mlx5 VFs.

-- 
Adrien Mazarguil
6WIND