NTB/CXL Bridge for InterVM communication

Project description

This project implements the virtualization of NTB functionality of the IDT 89HPES24NT6AG2 PCI Express Switch device in QEMU. The project has fixed the Linux Kernel version 6.1 and the QEMU version v8.0.2. The goal of the project is to implement a virtual NTB connection between 2 guest machines. The target scenario is the use of RDMA technology through the NTRDMA driver.

Implemented at the moment:

• VM guest images are based on core-image-full-cmdline. Added to the image: ntb_hw_idt, ntb, ntb_transport, ntb_tool as a module, ntb_perf as a module, ntrdma as a module and necessary dependencies.
• Added idt-ntb-ivshmem device to QEMU.
• Support for NTB registers and functionality:
  • NTB link functions
  • Message registers
  • Doorbell registers
  • Interrupts and interrupt masking
  • Memory window translation
  • Implementation of mw translation in DIR mode
  • Direct read/write into DMA VM space be i/o operations into mw
  • Added unsupported by IDT 89HPES24NT6AG2 NTB operations: mw_set_trans and mw_clear_trans functions (Necessary for ntb_perf). So the ntb_hw_idt driver was modified.
• PCIe port 0 and port 2 are configured
• Only one partition is implemented

Known issues

• ntb_perf test with use_dma flag failes (due to the lack of implementation of the DMA controller)
• ntrdma init failes with error (for the same reason as the previous point)
• if run_vm or run_vms failes with dynamic link error you need to uncommnet string: cp $(find ./tmp/work/x86_64-linux/qemu-system-native -type f -name qemu-system-x86_64 | sed -n 2p) $(find ./tmp/work/x86_64-linux/qemu-system-native -type f -name qemu-system-x86_64 | sed -n 1p) in the scripts/build_yocto.sh and rerun qemu build by the command ./run_container.sh --command=build --build=qemu

Requirements

• Docker

Quick start

1. Build the project in the docker container:

./run_container.sh --command=enter_qemu_devenv
./run_container.sh --command=finish_qemu_devenv
./run_container.sh --command=build

2. Run VMs:

./run_container.sh --command=run_vms --qemu-map-ram-to-shm=1000

3. Connect to the VM1 and VM2 in the another teminals ssh root@localhost -p7001 and ssh root@localhost -p7002

4. Run ntb_perf module to test the data transmition on both VMs: modprobe ntb_perf chunk_order=8 total_order=20. chunk_order is data chunk order [2^n] to transfer, total_order is the total data order [2^n] to transfer (a large total order can lead to a MW allocation error due to the BAR size limit and memory limitations of the virtual machine).

5. Check connection info cat /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_perf/0000\:00\:03.0/info.

Example:

root@qemux86-64:~# cat /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_perf/0000\:00\:03.0/info 
    Performance measuring tool info:

Local port 2, Global index 1
Test status: idle
Port 0 (0), Global index 0:
	Link status: up
	Out buffer addr 0x00000000e4157aba
	Out buff phys addr 0x00000000fe900000[p]
	Out buffer size 0x0000000000100000
	Out buffer xlat 0x0000000004b00000[p]
	In buffer addr 0x00000000a1d2914a
	In buffer size 0x0000000000100000
	In buffer xlat 0x0000000004b00000[p]

6. Run test by echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_perf/0000\:00\:03.0/run and check the result by cat /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_perf/0000\:00\:03.0/run.

Example:

root@qemux86-64:~# echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_perf/0000\:00\:03.0/run 
root@qemux86-64:~# cat /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_perf/0000\:00\:03.0/run 
    Peer 0 test statistics:
0: copied 1048576 bytes in 1325470 usecs, 0 MBytes/s

Usage

Using docker

run_container.sh is a unified starting point for the Docker container. The general syntax is:

./run_container.sh [OPTIONS]...

Run ./run_container.sh -h to see the help.

NOTE: run_container.sh has one extra option -- --host-build-dir=DIR. It represents relative path to the build directory that is mapped to the container. This argument is not passed to the container's entrypoint. By default the ./build_vm_image directory is used.

Using locally

First of all, install necessary dependencies for yocto project.

Then use ./scripts/dispatch_docker_command.sh as entrypoint. This is equivalent to using run_container.sh script. The rest of the README assumes that the docker case is used

Build project

First of all to add the idt-ntb-ivshmem device to the qemu it is necessary to create a patch from local source files:

./run_container.sh --command=enter_qemu_devenv
./run_container.sh --command=finish_qemu_devenv

After finish_qemu_devenv command patch will be created and appended to the meta-ntb-cxl layer.

Run ./run_container.sh --command=build to build the project.

Run VM

To run VM use command: ./run_container.sh --command=run_vm

User credentials to login into the vm:

• user: root
• pswd: not set

Run two connected VMs with idt-ntb-ivshmem

Run the following command: ./run_container.sh --command=run_vms --qemu-map-ram-to-shm=1000. Flag --qemu-map-ram-to-shm=1000 is necessary for memory window i/o operations to directly read/write into vm memory.

It uses the scripts/run_vms.sh script to run ivshmem-server and virtual machines.

QEMU options can be customized via CLI options:

• --ivshmem-common-opts
• --cmdline-common
• --common-opts
• --vm1-opts
• --vm2-opts

The default behavior is to append whatever is specified in that variables to default values. To override the default value instead, suffix the option with -override, like common-opts-override. Run --help for more information

To see default values of that options, refer to the script itself.

To connect to the VMs can be used telnet or ssh protocol:

• telnet port 8001 for VM1 and port 8002 for VM2
• ssh port 7001 for VM1 and port 7002 for VM2

QEMU development

QEMU development can be done both on a host system and with Docker

Before starting, the project should be built and the command ./run_container.sh --command=enter_qemu_devenv should be executed. After successful execution, the path to checkouted QEMU source repository relative to selected build directory will be printed out

Command enter_qemu_devenv also copies all files from qemu_src directory to working repository and automatically commits and squashes changes.

Make changes in QEMU and commit them. To run bash shell in docker container, the ./run_container --command=shell command can be used.

The ./run_container --command=finish_qemu_devenv command should be used to finish QEMU development. This will format patches from commits and copy them into this repository to yocto_files. When QEMU development is finished, QEMU rebuild is required. This can be done with ./run_container.sh --command=build --build=qemu command

When using host system, you may also try to use various other useful [devtool] (https://docs.yoctoproject.org/kernel-dev/common.html#using-devtool-to-patch-the-kernel) functions.

QEMU debugging

It might be useful to be able to read/write to a VM memory directly.

It's possible using one the following commands:

$ ./run_container.sh --command=run_vm --qemu-map-ram-to-shm[=SIZE]

or

$ ./run_container.sh --command=run_vms --qemu-map-ram-to-shm[=SIZE]

The =SIZE is optional. The default is 256. The value must be provided in mebibytes, without any suffix.

In case of a single VM, the shared memory will be at /dev/shm/qemu. In case of two VMs, the shared memory files will be respectively at /dev/shm/qemu1 and /dev/shm/qemu2.

Also, in case of 2 VMs, each VM's allocated memory is equal to a half of the total passed memory size.

If using docker, to interact with shared memory you must run a shell inside a container:

$ docker exec -it <containername> bash
docker$ dd if=/dev/shm/qemu bs=1 count=8
docker$ ...

Testing the IDT NTB QEMU device

ntb_pingpong

$ ./run_container.sh --command=run_vms

QEMU should report that something is transferred over out NTB device. Also, the counter in debugfs should increase over time:

$ ssh root@localhost -p7001
# cat /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_pingpong/*/count

ntb_tool

$ ./run_container.sh --command=run_vms --cmdline-common="initcall_blacklist=pp_init"

(needed to load ntb_tool instead of ntb_pingpong, both are built-in modules currently)

Doorbell register

VM1:

$ ssh root@localhost -p7001
# cd /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_tool/*
# echo 's 0xdeadbeef' >peer_db

VM2:

$ ssh root@localhost -p7002
# cd /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_tool/*
# cat db
0xdeadbeef

Also, setting the peer_mask should work.

Message registers

VM1:

# echo 0xdeadbeef >peer0/msg0

VM2:

# cat msg0
0xdeadbeef<-0

All message registers (msg[0-3]) should work.

Subsequent writes should not be performed if the MSGSTS of the target peer was not cleared (OUTMSGx is set and an interrupt is sent to host which attempts to write):

IVSHMEM: Refusing to write to msg register, INMSGSTS0 is non-zero (vm1 0x10000)

INMSGSTSx fields of MSGSTS are set on a write to INMSGx and should be unset by the client software on the peer (e.g. ntb_pingpong). With ntb_tool it can be achieved with the following:

# cat msg_sts
0x10000
# echo 'c 0xffffffff' >msg_sts
# cat msg_sts
0x0

Additional sources

See the kernel documentation for the full usage. Even more functionality is described in the source code.

ntb_hw_idt debugfs node

The driver has its own debugfs node with some useful info:

# cat /sys/kernel/debug/ntb_hw_idt/info\:0000\:00\:03.0

It can be used to verify that VMs have correct ports.

Also it's useful for viewing msg_mask, which is write-only in ntb_tool.