In order to try out the XDP functionality, it would be nice to have a playground. This could be useful if you are worried about experimental kernels (not sure why you're reading this, but hey...) or if you don't have the required hardware to run XDP.

This repo thus provides a vagrant based vm for you to try it out. We'll simply install the necessary kernel and some userspace tools to be able to load your program. Note that the vm will use an e1000 driver, which won't show much performance difference from the normal stack. Trust us that it would perform much better on real hardware.

Host prerequisites:

• libvirt
• vagrant
• vagrant-libvirt

On Debian (tested on Ant testbed): apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt libvirt-dev libvirt-clients libvirt-daemon-system

Debian 8 native vagrant distribution doesn't support libvirt provider: Download and install the latest release for Debian 64-bit here: https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html

Install vagrant plugins:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-reload
vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt
vagrant plugin install vagrant-mutate

(If someone tries this on non-libvirt vagrant, file a /issue and we can simplify the prerequisites.)

For convenience, there is a pre-built 4.8 rc kernel which includes the e1000 patch from git:ast/xdp. Feel free to build your own, or if you're reading this from the future, likely 4.9 will have support for it.

Bring the vagrant box up, with userspace tools (bcc) and custom kernel

git clone https://github.com/iovisor/xdp-vagrant
cd xdp-vagrant

If you're using ant testbed, you need to set up the https proxy:

• uncomment the following line in setup-apt.sh: echo "https_proxy=http://192.168.0.1:8123" | tee -a /etc/environment

If you get an error libvirt provider is not supported, there are two ways to solve it:

1 Use alternative vagrant box:

• uncomment the following line in Vagrantfile: config.vm.box = "rboyer/ubuntu-trusty64-libvirt"
• and comment original line: #config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64" # Ubuntu 14.04

2 If option 1 doesn't work conver the box to libvirt-compatible:

• convert the original vagrant box to libvirt provider: vagrant mutate ubuntu/trusty64 libvirt
• delete the original box: vagrant box remove --provider virtualbox ubuntu/trusty64
• check the box list and remove others if necessary: vagrant box list

Bring the VM up: vagrant up Note that some apt errors above are expected

If you modify any of the provisioning scripts (*.sh) you need to reload box and re-run provisioning: vagrant reload --provision

Finally, all the provisioning scripts should complete successfully and you should see pyroute2 installed message.

SSH to the VM:

vagrant ssh
uname -r

confirm that the running kernel is something like 4.7.0-07282016-torvalds+

You should find that the vm has two interfaces, we'll use the second one for testing and the first one for ssh.

vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:~$ ip -4 a
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    inet 192.168.121.153/24 brd 192.168.121.255 scope global eth0
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    inet 192.168.50.4/24 brd 192.168.50.255 scope global eth1

Let's start a udp packet performance stress test. Run this from the host in another shell:

./setup-pktgen.sh
MAC=ETH1_MAC_INSIDE_THE_VM
IP=ETH1_IP_INSIDE_THE_VM
VNET=TAP_DEVICE_OF_ETH1_OUTSIDE_THE_VM (e.g. virbr2)
sudo ./pktgen_sample03_burst_single_flow.sh -i $VNET -d $IP -m $MAC -t 1 -b 1 -c 0

Now, simply try out the sample xdp script. This comes from the libbcc-examples package:

sudo /usr/share/bcc/examples/networking/xdp/xdp_drop_count.py eth1
Printing drops per IP protocol-number, hit CTRL+C to stop
17: 179118 pkt/s
17: 509420 pkt/s