Hello,

I have been trying to use vde_switch + virtio enabled KVM guests and I am facing some kind of freeze problems.

The lab setup is the documented here :
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-france.org%2Fprj%2Finetdoc%2Fcours%2Finterco.ospf%2F&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&sl=fr&tl=en

Sorry, it's in french and the translation is quite funny.
This lab works fine with 100Mbps default interfaces.

With virtio nic model, guests are running, the OSPF routing protocol has converged, and when I try to install debian iperf package from a guest through a ssh connection, the download starts and freezes.
I'm still able to kill the ssh connection through the guest console.

Any hint ?

Hi!

Uhm... I must admit I haven't read whole document but I jump to section 9. The setup seems quite normal. If you have a recent kvm you can avoid 'vdeq' and use kvm native vde support.

I can try to give you some suggestions to debug virtual ethernet connections (layer 2).

I suppose you have vde2 with 'debug' menu, that's to say compiled with --enable-experimental configure flag. If you have a recent .deb it is ok! :)

1. Add '-F' option to vde_switch command line to use FSTP.

2. Monitor port, fstp and vlan status on each switch. Use 'debug/list' to have a list of parameters you can monitor and, for instance, 'debug/add fstp' to start monitoring fstp or 'debug/add port/+' to start monitoring new ports.

3. Analyze virtual ethernet traffic on each switch. Use vde pdump plugin to dump or monitor traffic as explained here: http://wiki.virtualsquare.org/index.php/VDE_Basic_Networking#Dump_or_Monitor_switch_traffic

If you're not able to find a solution and you think it's a vde bug please try to find the simplest way to reproduce it and then tell us how to do that (with some examples).

HTH,

luca

Hello,

Here are the debian packages I'm actually using :
$ dpkg -l kvm vde2 | grep ^ii
ii  kvm     79+dfsg-2    Full virtualization on x86 hardware
ii  vde2    2.2.2-3         Virtual Distributed Ethernet

I ran the lab setup with FSTP activated in vde_switch
I met the same problems.

Analysis of the pcap packet dump file shows some ip traffic is duplicated between (guests|routers).
. OSPF Hello packets frames are transmitted tagged and the protocol works fine
. SSH session frames are transmitted untagged and duplicated ! In this case, communication fails as these frames should be transmitted tagged too.

I guess the problem comes from the vlan list.
In the following list, VLAN 0 is active on ports 2,3, and 4 and it shouldn't as frames transmited between these ports should be tagged only.

vde$ vlan/allprint
0000 DATA END WITH '.'
VLAN 0000
-- Port 0001 tagged=0 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0002 tagged=0 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0003 tagged=0 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0004 tagged=0 active=1 status=Forwarding
VLAN 0012
-- Port 0002 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0003 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
VLAN 0013
-- Port 0002 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0004 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
VLAN 0023
-- Port 0003 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0004 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding

Is there a way to deactivate VLAN 0 on ports 2, 3 and 4 ?
Am I doing anything wrong ?

The pcap sample is at the following address : http://www.linux-france.org/~platu/vde_dump.cap

Regards,
- Philippe

Hello again,

A follow up to my previous post ...
I'm still stuck with duplicated untagged frames but I found a way to «deactivate» VLAN 0 and this was not the answer to my problem.

I tried this VLAN setup in order to isolate untagged frames.
VLANs 2 and 3 are only there to collect untagged frames.

vde$ vlan/print
0000 DATA END WITH '.'
VLAN 0000
-- Port 0001 tagged=0 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0002 tagged=0 active=1 status=Forwarding
VLAN 0002
-- Port 0003 tagged=0 active=1 status=Forwarding
VLAN 0003
-- Port 0004 tagged=0 active=1 status=Forwarding
VLAN 0012
-- Port 0002 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0003 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
VLAN 0013
-- Port 0002 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0004 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
VLAN 0023
-- Port 0003 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
-- Port 0004 tagged=1 active=1 status=Forwarding
.
1000 Success

vde$ port/print
0000 DATA END WITH '.'
Port 0001 untagged_vlan=0000 ACTIVE - Unnamed Allocatable
IN:  pkts        291          bytes                26267
OUT: pkts        731          bytes                91913
  -- endpoint ID 0008 module tuntap      : tap0
Port 0002 untagged_vlan=0000 ACTIVE - Unnamed Allocatable
IN:  pkts        884          bytes               117464
OUT: pkts       1729          bytes               175406
  -- endpoint ID 0017 module unix prog   : QEMU user=phil PID=9700  SOCK=/tmp/vde.ctl/.09700-00000
Port 0003 untagged_vlan=0002 ACTIVE - Unnamed Allocatable
IN:  pkts        461          bytes                92318
OUT: pkts       1457          bytes               102717
  -- endpoint ID 0019 module unix prog   : QEMU user=phil PID=9701  SOCK=/tmp/vde.ctl/.09701-00000
Port 0004 untagged_vlan=0003 ACTIVE - Unnamed Allocatable
IN:  pkts        291          bytes                28134
OUT: pkts       1286          bytes                84589
  -- endpoint ID 0013 module unix prog   : QEMU user=phil PID=9702  SOCK=/tmp/vde.ctl/.09702-00000
.
1000 Success

Any other hint ?

Hello,

I finally found a workaround to my VLAN internetworking troubles with virtio !!

I had to set manually each interface MTU to 1496 bytes.

This seems to be the major difference between the non virtio and virtio nic models.
This is a very old issue of inter-VLAN routing with Linux that had disappeared many years ago.

Now: the «silly me» part of the post.
The 2 previous posts are not relevant as frame duplication in pdump plugin capture is due to the fact that one frame is seen coming in on one port and seen again coming out on another port.
It would be great if the pdump plugin capture could be restricted to one designated switch port.

VDE is a fantastic piece of software, and I hope I'll be able to virtualize more switching and internetworking labs for my students ;)).

Regards,

- Philippe

Hello,

The following URLs, points to the correct documentation.

http://translate.google.fr/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-france.org%2Fprj%2Finetdoc%2Fcours%2Finterco.ospf%2Finterco.ospf.vm.html&act=url

MTU manual setup is not needed anymore.

Inter-VLAN routing on top of VDE works like a charm.

Regards,