Hello,

I have run into a regression following an update to stable dpdk-24.11 with a number of my Mellanox cx4/5/6 nics. This regression occurs with all nics in my lab which have DevX disabled: using mstconfig utility, I can see the flag UCTX_EN is not set.

Mainly, the issue is that the ports cannot be started, with the following error logs in the journal:

Set nb_rxd=1 (asked=512) for port=0
Set nb_txd=1 (asked=512) for port=0
starting port 0
Initializing port 0 [7c:fe:90:65:e6:54]
port 0: ntfp1 (mlx5_pci)
nb_rxq=2 nb_txq=2
rxq0=c9 rxq1=c25
txq0=c9 txq1=c25
port 0: rx_scatter=0 tx_scatter=0 max_rx_frame=1526
mlx5_net: port 0 number of descriptors requested for Tx queue 0 must be higher than MLX5_TX_COMP_THRESH, using 33 instead of 1
mlx5_net: port 0 increased number of descriptors in Tx queue 0 to the next power of two (64)
mlx5_net: port 0 number of descriptors requested for Tx queue 1 must be higher than MLX5_TX_COMP_THRESH, using 33 instead of 1
mlx5_net: port 0 increased number of descriptors in Tx queue 1 to the next power of two (64)
mlx5_net: Port 0 Rx queue 0 CQ creation failure.
mlx5_net: port 0 Rx queue allocation failed: Cannot allocate memory
rte_eth_dev_start(port 0) failed, error=-12
Failed to start port 0, set link down
Failed to start port 0

Looking more precisely into the problem, it appears that the number of Rx and Tx descriptors configured for my queues is 1. This happens because mlx5_dev_infos_get() return a limit of 1 for both Rx and Tx, which is unexpected. I identified this patch to be responsible for the regression:

4c3d7961d9002: net/mlx5: fix reported Rx/Tx descriptor limits
https://git.dpdk.org/dpdk/commit/?id=4c3d7961d9002bb715a8ee76bcf464d633316d4c

After doing some debugging, I noticed that hca_attr.log_max_wq_sz is never configured. This should be done in mlx5_devx_cmd_query_hca_attr() which is called in this bit of code:

https://git.dpdk.org/dpdk/tree/drivers/common/mlx5/mlx5_common.c#n681

/*
* When CTX is created by Verbs, query HCA attribute is unsupported.
* When CTX is imported, we cannot know if it is created by DevX or
* Verbs. So, we use query HCA attribute function to check it.
*/
if (cdev->config.devx || cdev->config.device_fd != MLX5_ARG_UNSET) {

/* Query HCA attributes. */
ret = mlx5_devx_cmd_query_hca_attr(cdev->ctx, &cdev->config.hca_attr);
if (ret) {

DRV_LOG(ERR, "Unable to read HCA caps in DevX mode.");
rte_errno = ENOTSUP;
goto error;

}
cdev->config.devx = 1;

}
DRV_LOG(DEBUG, "DevX is %ssupported.", cdev->config.devx ? "" : "NOT ");

I deduced that following the above patch, the correct value for maximum Rx and Tx descriptors will only be set if DevX is enabled (see the if condition on cdev->config.devx). If it is disabled, then maximum Rx and Tx descriptors will be 1, which will make the ports fail to start. Perhaps we should keep the previous default value (65535) if config.devx == 0 (DevX off)? This could be done like this, for example:

diff --git a/drivers/net/mlx5/mlx5_ethdev.c b/drivers/net/mlx5/mlx5_ethdev.c
index 7708a0b80883..8ba3eb4a32de 100644
--- a/drivers/net/mlx5/mlx5_ethdev.c
+++ b/drivers/net/mlx5/mlx5_ethdev.c
@@ -359,10 +359,12 @@ mlx5_dev_infos_get(struct rte_eth_dev *dev, struct rte_eth_dev_info *info)
info->flow_type_rss_offloads = ~MLX5_RSS_HF_MASK;
mlx5_set_default_params(dev, info);
mlx5_set_txlimit_params(dev, info);
- info->rx_desc_lim.nb_max =
- 1 << priv->sh->cdev->config.hca_attr.log_max_wq_sz;
- info->tx_desc_lim.nb_max =
- 1 << priv->sh->cdev->config.hca_attr.log_max_wq_sz;
+ if (priv->sh->cdev->config.devx) {
+ info->rx_desc_lim.nb_max =
+ 1 << priv->sh->cdev->config.hca_attr.log_max_wq_sz;
+ info->tx_desc_lim.nb_max =
+ 1 << priv->sh->cdev->config.hca_attr.log_max_wq_sz;
+ }
if (priv->sh->cdev->config.hca_attr.mem_rq_rmp &&
priv->obj_ops.rxq_obj_new == devx_obj_ops.rxq_obj_new)
info->dev_capa |= RTE_ETH_DEV_CAPA_RXQ_SHARE;

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
Edwin Brossette.