[dpdk-users] DPDK support for 82579

[James Bensley <jwbensley@gmail.com>]

Hi All,

I have see the list of support NICs here: http://dpdk.org/doc/nics

Although it doesn’t say which NICs are confirmed as NOT working. I
have looking into DPDK support (for Pktgen and Moongen) on commodity
devices (e.g. laptops and desktops). I have DPDK + Pktgen compiled and
working on my home desktop:

bensley@htpc-ubuntu:/opt/dpdk/dpdk-17.08/usertools$ lspci | grep Eth
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection
I217-V (rev 05)

However on my laptop it seems the NIC is “unsupported”:

bensley@ubuntu-laptop:/opt/dpdk/dpdk-17.08/usertools$ lspci | grep Eth
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network
Connection (rev 04)

When I say unsupported I mean that Intel 82579 chips aren’t on the
list of supported NICs (where as I217 is explicitly listed) so I have
two questions;

1. Is there a list of confirmed unsupported NICs?

2. It maybe that this NIC will work but it is untested (unless someone
can confirm otherwise) so is there a way I can force DPDK + Pktgen to
try and use this 82579 NIC?

Please see this output of me trying to bind the laptop NIC to DPDK,
dpdk-devbind.py doesn't explicitly reject the NIC (by which I mean no
error message and the return code from `sudo ./dpdk-devbind.py -b
e1000e 00:19.0` is 0) but it simply doesn’t work, the NIC is “given”
back to the Kernel:
https://null.53bits.co.uk/uploads/linux/applications/dpdk/Ubuntu-Laptop-DPDK-NIC-Bind.txt

In the `lshw` output it can be seen that the NIC uses an e1000e
driver, do I need to compile the e1000e driver bundled with the DPDK
source and replace my existing/native driver with that, if so how can
I compile it?

bensley@ubuntu-laptop:/opt/dpdk/dpdk-17.08/drivers/net/e1000$ make
Makefile:32: /mk/rte.vars.mk: No such file or directory
Makefile:103: /mk/rte.lib.mk: No such file or directory
make: *** No rule to make target '/mk/rte.lib.mk'. Stop.

Cheers,
James.

P.S. I’m using DPDK 17.08 and Pktgen 3.4.2, I did a vanilla compile,
using these exact commands:
https://null.53bits.co.uk/index.php?page=ptkgen-install