igb
igb is a family of Intel’s gigabit ethernet controllers. In QEMU, 82576 emulation is implemented in particular. Its datasheet is available at [1].
This implementation is expected to be useful to test SR-IOV networking without requiring physical hardware.
Limitations
This igb implementation was tested with Linux Test Project [2] and Windows HLK [3] during the initial development. Later it was also tested with DPDK Test Suite [4]. The command used when testing with LTP is:
network.sh -6mta
Be aware that this implementation lacks many functionalities available with the actual hardware, and you may experience various failures if you try to use it with a different operating system other than DPDK, Linux, and Windows or if you try functionalities not covered by the tests.
Using igb
Using igb should be nothing different from using another network device. See Network emulation in general.
However, you may also need to perform additional steps to activate SR-IOV feature on your guest. For Linux, refer to [5].
Developing igb
igb is the successor of e1000e, and e1000e is the successor of e1000 in turn. As these devices are very similar, if you make a change for igb and the same change can be applied to e1000e and e1000, please do so.
Please do not forget to run tests before submitting a change. As tests included in QEMU is very minimal, run some application which is likely to be affected by the change to confirm it works in an integrated system.
Testing igb
A qtest of the basic functionality is available. Run the below at the build directory:
meson test qtest-x86_64/qos-test
ethtool can test register accesses, interrupts, etc. It is automated as an Avocado test and can be ran with the following command:
make check-avocado AVOCADO_TESTS=tests/avocado/netdev-ethtool.py