Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH v2] SDK: Add scripts to initialize DPDK runtime

[Thomas Monjalon <thomas.monjalon@6wind.com>]

2017-01-12 15:43, Christian Ehrhardt:
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 4:15 PM, Thomas Monjalon <thomas.monjalon@6wind.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for sending your Debian/Ubuntu work.
> >
> > 2016-12-13 16:47, Luca Boccassi:
> > > From: Christian Ehrhardt <christian.ehrhardt@canonical.com>
> > >
> > > A tools/init directory is added with dpdk-init, a script that can be
> > > used to initialize a DPDK runtime environment. 2 config files with
> > > default options, dpdk.conf and interfaces, are provided as well
> > > together with a SysV init script and a systemd service unit.
> >
> > I have 2 concerns:
> >
> > - What does exactly mean "initialize a DPDK runtime environment"?
> > Should it be documented somewhere?
> >
> 
> Sorry for the late reply, Luca made me aware that this was lost in the
> Christmas hole.
> It means that you make a system config ready to be used in a persistent way
> e.g. cross reboots.
> 
> The common steps to prep a system in that regard are assigning a set of
> cards to dpdk (=>dpdk-devbind) and furthermore to set up hugepages as
> needed.
> The latter is only a simple helper for the convenience of the admin. It can
> suit 95% of the cases but if someone has something very specific in mind a
> manual hugepage setup might be needed.
> 
> The conf files themself have comment on their usage.
> I'm not sure how much more (on top of the comments in the config files) a
> doc might be useful.
> But then that might just be because I happen to know about that stuff.
> We could hapilly copy the bit we have about it at
> https://help.ubuntu.com/16.04/serverguide/DPDK.html#dpdk-config-dev
> https://help.ubuntu.com/16.04/serverguide/DPDK.html#dpdk-config-hp
> 
> Luca/Thomas - what do you think about that?

I was just thinking about indicating in the Linux starting guide that
the DPDK environment can be configured in some system files.

While I see the benefit of such configuration, I am not sure we should
configure the DPDK itself. We could have several applications using DPDK
with different configurations.
Do you think you could rework it in a way it can be integrated by
applications in their own configuration?

More opinions from users and integrators would be welcome here.