Re: [Xen-users] forcing HVM to specific network model with PV-aware FreeBSD DomU

[Roger Pau Monnà <roger.pau@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

Adding the freebsd-xen mailing list since somebody might be able to
provide better advice than me regarding network stuff.

El 15/10/15 a les 12.31, Andreas Pflug ha escrit:
> Hi!
> 
> For quite a while, I've been running several pfSense firewall DomUs up
> to version 2.15 on Xen. Since the FreeBSD kernel 8.3 of pfSense wasn't
> xen-aware the model e1000 was used, and I had all networking features as
> expected though performance was degraded.
> 
> When the new pfSense 2.2 was introduced, the kernel changed to FreeBSD
> 10.1 which now (finally!) includes a xen netfront driver, promising a
> vastly improved performance. Unfortunately, its implementation is quite
> sketchy:
> - offloading issues, which can be worked around by disabling tx
> offloading using a custom vif-script

Is this related to the long-standing pf+TSO issues? There's a recent
commit that should solve it:

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=289316

There seems to be plans to issue an EN for that one, so you might be
able to get it by just using freebsd-update (or whatever pfSense uses)
without having to wait for a new stable release.

> - VLANs are not supported. Can be achieved with multiple bridges in
> Dom0, if 8 are enough. If you need more, you're out of luck.
> - ALTQ not supported. No known workaround, preventing any traffic shaping.

Sadly I'm not aware of anyone working on this two items. Any pickers?

> On the FreeBSD side, it is said that the xn xen netfront driver can't be
> disabled at boot time, unless a custom kernel is built (certainly not
> desirable regarding security updates), so:
> 
> How can I disable xen-netback drivers for a specific HVM? It should
> respect the "model=e1000" setting (or maybe virtio?). I'm running Xen
> 4.4 on Debian.

I've recently committed a patch to HEAD in order to disable PV nics or
disks on request:

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=286999

I will backport it to stable-10 soon to make sure it's on the next
stable release (FreeBSD 10.3). Apart from that, there's not much we can
do now.

Roger.


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