igb — QEMU documentation

# 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:

    pyvenv/bin/meson test qtest-x86_64/qos-test

ethtool can test register accesses, interrupts, etc. It is automated as an functional test and can be run from the build directory with the following command:

    pyvenv/bin/meson test --suite thorough func-x86_64-netdev_ethtool

## References

[1]

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/82576eb-gigabit-ethernet-controller-datasheet.pdf

[2]

https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp

[3]

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/hlk/

[4]

https://doc.dpdk.org/dts/gsg/

[5]

https://docs.kernel.org/PCI/pci-iov-howto.html