The setup commands and installed packages needed on various systems may be different.
For details on Linux distributions and the versions tested, please consult the DPDK Release Notes.
-* GNU ``make``.
+* General development tools including a supported C compiler such as gcc (version 4.9+) or clang (version 3.4+).
-* coreutils: ``cmp``, ``sed``, ``grep``, ``arch``, etc.
+ * For RHEL/Fedora systems these can be installed using ``dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"``
+ * For Ubuntu/Debian systems these can be installed using ``apt install build-essential``
+ * For Alpine Linux, ``apk add gcc libc-dev bsd-compat-headers libexecinfo-dev``
-* gcc: versions 4.9 or later is recommended for all platforms.
- On some distributions, some specific compiler flags and linker flags are enabled by
- default and affect performance (``-fstack-protector``, for example). Please refer to the documentation
- of your distribution and to ``gcc -dumpspecs``.
+* Python 3.5 or later.
-* libc headers, often packaged as ``gcc-multilib`` (``glibc-devel.i686`` / ``libc6-dev-i386``;
- ``glibc-devel.x86_64`` / ``libc6-dev`` for 64-bit compilation on Intel architecture;
- ``glibc-devel.ppc64`` for 64 bit IBM Power architecture;)
+* Meson (version 0.49.2+) and ninja
-* Linux kernel headers or sources required to build kernel modules. (kernel - devel.x86_64;
- kernel - devel.ppc64)
+ * ``meson`` & ``ninja-build`` packages in most Linux distributions
+ * If the packaged version is below the minimum version, the latest versions
+ can be installed from Python's "pip" repository: ``pip3 install meson ninja``
-* Additional packages required for 32-bit compilation on 64-bit systems are:
+* ``pyelftools`` (version 0.22+)
- * glibc.i686, libgcc.i686, libstdc++.i686 and glibc-devel.i686 for Intel i686/x86_64;
+ * For Fedora systems it can be installed using ``dnf install python-pyelftools``
+ * For RHEL/CentOS systems it can be installed using ``pip3 install pyelftools``
+ * For Ubuntu/Debian it can be installed using ``apt install python3-pyelftools``
+ * For Alpine Linux, ``apk add py3-elftools``
- * glibc.ppc64, libgcc.ppc64, libstdc++.ppc64 and glibc-devel.ppc64 for IBM ppc_64;
+* Library for handling NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access).
- .. note::
+ * ``numactl-devel`` in RHEL/Fedora;
+ * ``libnuma-dev`` in Debian/Ubuntu;
+ * ``numactl-dev`` in Alpine Linux
- x86_x32 ABI is currently supported with distribution packages only on Ubuntu
- higher than 13.10 or recent Debian distribution. The only supported compiler is gcc 4.9+.
-
-* libnuma-devel - library for handling NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access).
+.. note::
-* Python, version 2.7+ or 3.2+, to use various helper scripts included in the DPDK package.
+ Please ensure that the latest patches are applied to third party libraries
+ and software to avoid any known vulnerabilities.
**Optional Tools:**
which allows users to take leading edge advantage of IBM's latest POWER hardware features on Linux. To install
it, see the IBM official installation document.
-* libpcap headers and libraries (libpcap-devel) to compile and use the libpcap-based poll-mode driver.
- This driver is disabled by default and can be enabled by setting ``CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_PMD_PCAP=y`` in the build time config file.
+**Additional Libraries**
+
+A number of DPDK components, such as libraries and poll-mode drivers (PMDs) have additional dependencies.
+For DPDK builds, the presence or absence of these dependencies will be automatically detected
+enabling or disabling the relevant components appropriately.
+
+In each case, the relevant library development package (``-devel`` or ``-dev``) is needed to build the DPDK components.
+
+For libraries the additional dependencies include:
+
+* libarchive: for some unit tests using tar to get their resources.
+
+* libelf: to compile and use the bpf library.
+
+For poll-mode drivers, the additional dependencies for each driver can be
+found in that driver's documentation in the relevant DPDK guide document,
+e.g. :doc:`../nics/index`
+
+
+Building DPDK Applications
+--------------------------
+
+The tool pkg-config or pkgconf, integrated in most build systems,
+must be used to parse options and dependencies from libdpdk.pc.
-* libarchive headers and library are needed for some unit tests using tar to get their resources.
+.. note::
+
+ pkg-config 0.27, supplied with RHEL-7,
+ does not process the Libs.private section correctly,
+ resulting in statically linked applications not being linked properly.
Running DPDK Applications
-------------------------
-To run an DPDK application, some customization may be required on the target machine.
+To run a DPDK application, some customization may be required on the target machine.
System Software
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**Required:**
-* Kernel version >= 3.2
+* Kernel version >= 3.16
The kernel version required is based on the oldest long term stable kernel available
at kernel.org when the DPDK version is in development.
+ Compatibility for recent distribution kernels will be kept, notably RHEL/CentOS 7.
The kernel version in use can be checked using the command::
Reserving Hugepages for DPDK Use
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-The allocation of hugepages should be done at boot time or as soon as possible after system boot
-to prevent memory from being fragmented in physical memory.
+The reservation of hugepages can be performed at run time.
+This is done by echoing the number of hugepages required
+to a ``nr_hugepages`` file in the ``/sys/kernel/`` directory
+corresponding to a specific page size (in Kilobytes).
+For a single-node system, the command to use is as follows
+(assuming that 1024 of 2MB pages are required)::
+
+ echo 1024 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
+
+On a NUMA machine, the above command will usually divide the number of hugepages
+equally across all NUMA nodes (assuming there is enough memory on all NUMA nodes).
+However, pages can also be reserved explicitly on individual NUMA nodes
+using a ``nr_hugepages`` file in the ``/sys/devices/`` directory::
+
+ echo 1024 > /sys/devices/system/node/node0/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
+ echo 1024 > /sys/devices/system/node/node1/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
+
+The tool ``dpdk-hugepages.py`` can be used to manage hugepages.
+
+.. note::
+
+ Some kernel versions may not allow reserving 1 GB hugepages at run time,
+ so reserving them at boot time may be the only option.
+ Please see below for instructions.
+
+**Alternative:**
+
+In the general case, reserving hugepages at run time is perfectly fine,
+but in use cases where having lots of physically contiguous memory is required,
+it is preferable to reserve hugepages at boot time,
+as that will help in preventing physical memory from becoming heavily fragmented.
+
To reserve hugepages at boot time, a parameter is passed to the Linux kernel on the kernel command line.
For 2 MB pages, just pass the hugepages option to the kernel. For example, to reserve 1024 pages of 2 MB, use::
the number of hugepages reserved at boot time is generally divided equally between the two sockets
(on the assumption that sufficient memory is present on both sockets).
-See the Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt file in your Linux source tree for further details of these and other kernel options.
-
-**Alternative:**
-
-For 2 MB pages, there is also the option of allocating hugepages after the system has booted.
-This is done by echoing the number of hugepages required to a nr_hugepages file in the ``/sys/devices/`` directory.
-For a single-node system, the command to use is as follows (assuming that 1024 pages are required)::
-
- echo 1024 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
-
-On a NUMA machine, pages should be allocated explicitly on separate nodes::
+See the Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt file in your Linux source tree for further details of these and other kernel options.
- echo 1024 > /sys/devices/system/node/node0/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
- echo 1024 > /sys/devices/system/node/node1/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
-
-.. note::
-
- For 1G pages, it is not possible to reserve the hugepage memory after the system has booted.
+Using Hugepages with the DPDK
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- On IBM POWER system, the nr_overcommit_hugepages should be set to the same value as nr_hugepages.
- For example, if the required page number is 128, the following commands are used::
+If secondary process support is not required, DPDK is able to use hugepages
+without any configuration by using "in-memory" mode.
+Please see :doc:`linux_eal_parameters` for more details.
- echo 128 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-16384kB/nr_hugepages
- echo 128 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-16384kB/nr_overcommit_hugepages
+If secondary process support is required,
+mount points for hugepages need to be created.
+On modern Linux distributions, a default mount point for hugepages
+is provided by the system and is located at ``/dev/hugepages``.
+This mount point will use the default hugepage size
+set by the kernel parameters as described above.
-Using Hugepages with the DPDK
-^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+However, in order to use hugepage sizes other than the default, it is necessary
+to manually create mount points for those hugepage sizes (e.g. 1GB pages).
-Once the hugepage memory is reserved, to make the memory available for DPDK use, perform the following steps::
+To make the hugepages of size 1GB available for DPDK use,
+following steps must be performed::
mkdir /mnt/huge
- mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt/huge
+ mount -t hugetlbfs pagesize=1GB /mnt/huge
The mount point can be made permanent across reboots, by adding the following line to the ``/etc/fstab`` file::
- nodev /mnt/huge hugetlbfs defaults 0 0
-
-For 1GB pages, the page size must be specified as a mount option::
-
- nodev /mnt/huge_1GB hugetlbfs pagesize=1GB 0 0
+ nodev /mnt/huge hugetlbfs pagesize=1GB 0 0