Kernel Support for FreeBSD

[VishnuVuggepalli]

Hi Team,
I am looking to run OpenVswitch on Freebsd, with the in-kernel mode , but it seems like efforts have been "lost in space" -
any commenst on what works and what does not work for freebsd in terms of OpenVswitch with kernel module

[igsilya]

I believe, there were some attempts to create a kernel module for FreeBSD, but they were never completed. So, at the moment only the userspace switching can be used.

[VishnuVuggepalli]

Seems like basic bridging works , but still needs DPDK or sometimg , as the packet transfer even in an ICMP ping takes 1+ second,

and the VXLAN's or any tunnel implementation fails .

root@V~ # ovs-vsctl show cf6371e2-2468-460a-9768-db6d3bb85e3a Bridge ovs-vm datapath_type: netdev Port tap2 tag: 112 Interface tap2 Port gre0 Interface gre0 type: gre options: {remote_ip="192.168.113.201"} error: "could not open network device gre0 (Address family not supported by protocol family)" Port ovs-vm Interface ovs-vm type: internal Port tap3 tag: 112 Interface tap3 Port vxlan1213 Interface vxlan1213 type: vxlan options: {key="1213", remote_ip="192.168.113.201"} error: "could not open network device vxlan1213 (Address family not supported by protocol family)" Port tap4 tag: 113 Interface tap4 Port igb0 Interface igb0

Secondly,
Does DPDK work on FreeBSD as of now ?
I tried to use the ports , but the build gave no options
root@40gig-24cr:/usr/ports/net/openvswitch # make config ===> No options to configure

this is if we try to build it from the source - like a git clone
./configure --enable-dpdk --with-dpdk=/usr/local --disable-gui

It does not detect any of the parameter as an option as it needs to run many files that are linux oriented -- and this is done by pulling in LTS version (3.1), latest version (3.6) , most freq version (2.7)
it builds, but none seems to work.

I am exploring ways in which we can get atleast VXLAN working within user space -- maybe start a project

any suggestion on paths going forward

[igsilya]

Seems like basic bridging works , but still needs DPDK or sometimg , as the packet transfer even in an ICMP ping takes 1+ second,

Not sure what is going on there, 1 second is way too much for anything, something must be wrong there...

and the VXLAN's or any tunnel implementation fails .

This is also strange. Since it supposed to be a userspace datapath, the tunnels are implemented entirely by ovs-vswitchd, so seeing those errors is not something I would expect. Anything interesting in the logs?

Secondly,
Does DPDK work on FreeBSD as of now ?

There is no DPDK support for BSD at the moment. Current code in netdev-dpdk in OVS includes a bunch of linux-specific headers that are necessary for DPDK vhost library. It can be carved out to make DPDK support build on BSD, but nobody was interested in this so far.

All in all, things should generally work and 1 second latency is not something that should be happening, but OVS on FreeBSD is likely not suitable for high-performance application at this point in time. Linux is a much better supported platform in that regard.