This document provides instructions for setting up a CentOS 7 VM using VirtualBox for DPDK training. It describes installing CentOS 7 Minimal, configuring the VM with 4 network interfaces, installing DPDK and related tools, compiling sample applications like l3fwd and pktgen, and manually starting the applications on the VM to test basic packet forwarding functionality.

1. CentOS 7 VM for DPDK training
20 May 2015
16:26
For DPDK training we can use 2 or 3 VM scenario. In case of 2 VM we run pktgen on one VM and
l3fwd on the second, so l3fwd forwards traffic back to pktgen port 0 or 1 depending on IP address.
In case of 3 VM scenario l3fwd forwards traffic from one pktgen VM to another:
To run DPDK training on Windows PC we can use latest version of VirtualBox
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads and most versions of Linux: Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS.
Steps below describe how to use CentOS 7 Minimal ISO http://www.centos.org/download/. VM
images created with VirtualBox can be used with KVM+QEMU as well if saved in compatible format.
To install VirtualBox with 64-bit support for VMs make sure that Intel VT-x is enabled in the host PC
BIOS and if you have Windows with Hyper-V enabled - disable it to allow VirtualBox take ownership
of VT-x .
Create a VM for DPDK:

4. Configure VM by clicking on Settings.
Select 2 CPUs:

5. Select CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal ISO
Configure 4 network adapters: first attached to "NAT" (for yum), next two attached to "Internal" and
last one attached to "Host-only" (for ssh to the VM)

7. You can disable Audio, Serial Ports and USB as they will not be needed.

8. Now we can start VM and install CentOS 7

9. Select Installation Destination:

10. Software selection:

11. Set host name and turn on network interfaces

12. Start installation and create root and dpdk user:

14. Reboot.

15. To make life easier add NOPASSWD for sudo:
$sudo visudo
## Same thing without a password
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
Use nmtui to setup static IP addresses for interfaces attached to "internal" network:

16. We will need these addresses for MAC address discovery.
You can use "nmcli d" command to check networks:
[dpdk@dpdk ~]$ nmcli d
DEVICE TYPE STATE CONNECTION
enp0s10 ethernet connected Host-only (enp0s10)
enp0s3 ethernet connected NAT (enp0s3)
enp0s8 ethernet connected DPDK port 0 (enp0s8)

17. enp0s9 ethernet connected DPDK port 1 (enp0s9)
lo loopback unmanaged --
If your network uses proxy export http_proxy for yum and wget
$ export http_proxy=http://your_proxy:proxy_port
Use sudo -E yum install to add following components which are missing in minimal installation
gcc wget git patch vim
psmisc (killall)
net-tools (arp, netstat)
pciutils (lspci)
socat libpcap-devel (for pktgen)
kernel-devel
Make sure that /lib/modules/$kernel/build links to proper /usr/src/kernels/$kernel directory
Ready to download and install dpdk.
$mkdir dpdk.org
$wget -P dpdk.org/ http://dpdk.org/browse/dpdk/snapshot/dpdk-2.0.0.tar.gz
$tar xzvf dpdk.org/dpdk-2.0.0.tar.gz
Create dpdk link, so if needs be we can easily re-link it to a different DPDK version :
$ln –s dpdk-2.0.0 dpdk
If you want to cross-compile DPDK for different CPU platform not listed in dpdk/config/* files you
can edit existing config files or create new configuration (proper way) and change
CONFIG_RTE_MACHINE. For example, to compile for Sandy Bridge on Haswell platform copy
defconfig_x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc to defconfig_x86_64-snb-linuxapp-gcc and set
CONFIG_RTE_MACHINE=snb
All platforms are listed in dpdk/config/common_linuxconfig:
## machine can define specific variables or action for a specific
board
## RTE_MACHINE can be:
## default nothing specific
## native current machine
## atm Intel® Atom microarchitecture
## nhm Intel® microarchitecture code name Nehalem
## wsm Intel® microarchitecture code name Westmere
## snb Intel® microarchitecture code name Sandy Bridge
## ivb Intel® microarchitecture code name Ivy Bridge
##
## Note: if your compiler does not support the relevant -march
options,
## it will be compiled with whatever latest processor the compiler
supports!
$dpdk/tools/setup.sh
-> option 9: x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc
-> option 12: Insert IGB UIO module
-> option 15: allocate 128 huge pages
To make life easier add RTE_SDK and RTE_TARGET to .bash_profile:
~/.bash_profile
export RTE_SDK=/home/dpdk/dpdk

18. export RTE_TARGET=x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc
You also can add export http_proxy here if you need Internet access
Add to ~/.bashrc
# User specific aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
. ~/.bash_aliases
fi
And create ~/.bash_aliases file with the following lines:
alias dpstat='~/dpdk/tools/dpdk_nic_bind.py --status'
alias dpbind='sudo -E ~/dpdk/tools/dpdk_nic_bind.py --force --
bind=igb_uio'
alias dpunbind='sudo -E ~/dpdk/tools/dpdk_nic_bind.py -u'
Re-login. Now we can list/bind/unbind interfaces to DPDK by dpstat/dpbind/dpunbind commands:
[dpdk@dpdk ~]$ dpstat
Network devices using DPDK-compatible driver
============================================
<none>
Network devices using kernel driver
===================================
0000:00:03.0 '82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller' if=enp0s3
drv=e1000 unused=igb_uio *Active*
0000:00:08.0 '82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller' if=enp0s8
drv=e1000 unused=igb_uio *Active*
0000:00:09.0 '82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller' if=enp0s9
drv=e1000 unused=igb_uio *Active*
0000:00:0a.0 '82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller' if=enp0s10
drv=e1000 unused=igb_uio *Active*
Other network devices
=====================
<none>
Compile l3fwd. For DPDK 2.0 we need to patch it, so download patches first from DPDK Patchwork
http://dpdk.org/dev/patchwork/project/dpdk/list/
Patch 4752 [dpdk-dev] examples: add ip version check for l3fwd app
$wget http://dpdk.org/dev/patchwork/patch/4752/raw/ -O
dpdk.org/4752.patch
Patch 4774 [dpdk-dev,v2] l3fwd: make destination mac address configurable
$wget http://dpdk.org/dev/patchwork/patch/4774/raw/ -O
dpdk.org/4774.patch
Apply downloaded patches:
[dpdk@dpdk ~]$ cd dpdk
[dpdk@dpdk dpdk]$ patch -p 1 -i ../dpdk.org/4752.patch
patching file examples/l3fwd/main.c
[dpdk@dpdk dpdk]$ patch -p 1 -i ../dpdk.org/4774.patch
patching file examples/l3fwd/main.c

19. Edit examples/l3fwd/main.c and set to 1:
#define DO_IP_VERSION_CHECK 1
To enable SW classification of IP packets for emulated devices.
Make l3fwd:
$cd examples/l3fwd
$make
Now we need a VM with pktgen to generate some traffic…
Instead of re-doing all steps above clone VM image we just created and after boot use nmtui to
change static IP addresses and host name to pk-gen.
Download pktgen from dpdk.org:
$wget -P dpdk.org http://dpdk.org/browse/apps/pktgen-
dpdk/snapshot/pktgen-2.9.0.tar.gz
$tar xzvf pktgen-2.9.0.tar.gz
$ln –s pktgen-2.9.0 pktgen
$cd pktgen
$make
Starting pktgen and l3fwd manually
First we need to bind our interfaces to igb_uio. (We already mounted hugepages and inserted
igb_uio above using dpdk/tools/setup.sh)
$sudo -E ~/dpdk/tools/dpdk_nic_bind.py --force --bind=igb_uio
00:08.0 00:09.0
Or, using dpdk/tools/setup.sh select option
[18] Bind Ethernet device to IGB UIO module
Or, with dpbind alias:
$dpbind 00:08.0 00:09.0
$ sudo ./app/app/$RTE_TARGET/pktgen -c 3 -n 2 -m 128 -- -T -p 0x03 -
m "[1:1].0, [1:1].1"

20. After you start pktgen hit Enter for command prompt.
We can source MAC addresses of pktgen
Src MAC Address : 08:00:27:9d:fd:7e 08:00:27:af:58:f6
as destinations for l3fwd:
$sudo dpdk/examples/l3fwd/build/l3fwd -c 2 -n 2 -- -p 0x03 --config
"(0,0,1),(1,0,1)" --eth-dest 0,08:00:27:9d:fd:7e --eth-dest 1,08:00:27:af:58:f6
For l3fwd running with emulated e1000 we can use only one core (-c 2) as emulated e1000 NIC
doesn't support multiple tx queues at all (see
http://dpdk.org/browse/dpdk/tree/lib/librte_pmd_e1000/em_ethdev.c#n884) and virtio NIC
doesn't support multiple tx queues by default.
At startup l3fwd prints MAC addresses of its ports:
Initializing port 0 ... Creating queues: nb_rxq=1 nb_txq=1...
Address:08:00:27:9F:7F:C3,
and we can use port 0 MAC address to configure pktgen:
Pktgen> set mac 0 08:00:27:9F:7F:C3
Pktgen> set ip dst 0 2.1.1.24
And start port 0:
Pktgen> start 0

21. Changing destination IP to 1.1.1.x we can direct traffic back to port 0: