5. EAL parameters

This document contains a list of all EAL parameters. These parameters can be used by any DPDK application running on FreeBSD.

5.1. Common EAL parameters

The following EAL parameters are common to all platforms supported by DPDK.

5.1.1. Lcore-related options

• -c <core mask>

  Set the hexadecimal bitmask of the cores to run on.

• -l <core list>

  List of cores to run on

  The argument format is <c1>[-c2][,c3[-c4],...] where c1, c2, etc are core indexes between 0 and 128.

• --lcores <core map>

  Map lcore set to physical cpu set

  The argument format is:

  <lcores[@cpus]>[<,lcores[@cpus]>...]
  

  Lcore and CPU lists are grouped by ( and ) Within the group. The - character is used as a range separator and , is used as a single number separator. The grouping () can be omitted for single element group. The @ can be omitted if cpus and lcores have the same value.

Note

At a given instance only one core option --lcores, -l or -c can be used.

• --main-lcore <core ID>

  Core ID that is used as main.

• -s <service core mask>

  Hexadecimal bitmask of cores to be used as service cores.

5.1.2. Device-related options

• -b, --block <[domain:]bus:devid.func>

  Skip probing a PCI device to prevent EAL from using it. Multiple -b options are allowed.

Note

Block list cannot be used with the allow list -a option.

• -a, --allow <[domain:]bus:devid.func>

  Add a PCI device in to the list of devices to probe.

Note

Allow list cannot be used with the block list -b option.

• --vdev <device arguments>

  Add a virtual device using the format:

  <driver><id>[,key=val, ...]
  

  For example:

  --vdev 'net_pcap0,rx_pcap=input.pcap,tx_pcap=output.pcap'
  

• -d <path to shared object or directory>

  Load external drivers. An argument can be a single shared object file, or a directory containing multiple driver shared objects. Multiple -d options are allowed.

• --no-pci

  Disable PCI bus.

5.1.3. Multiprocessing-related options

• --proc-type <primary|secondary|auto>

  Set the type of the current process.

• --base-virtaddr <address>

  Attempt to use a different starting address for all memory maps of the primary DPDK process. This can be helpful if secondary processes cannot start due to conflicts in address map.

5.1.4. Memory-related options

• -n <number of channels>

  Set the number of memory channels to use.

• -r <number of ranks>

  Set the number of memory ranks (auto-detected by default).

• -m <megabytes>

  Amount of memory to preallocate at startup.

• --in-memory

  Do not create any shared data structures and run entirely in memory. Implies --no-shconf and (if applicable) --huge-unlink.

• --iova-mode <pa|va>

  Force IOVA mode to a specific value.

• --huge-worker-stack[=size]

  Allocate worker stack memory from hugepage memory. Stack size defaults to system pthread stack size unless the optional size (in kbytes) is specified.

5.1.5. Debugging options

• --no-shconf

  No shared files created (implies no secondary process support).

• --no-huge

  Use anonymous memory instead of hugepages (implies no secondary process support).

• --log-level <type:val>

  Specify log level for a specific component. For example:

  --log-level lib.eal:debug
  

  Can be specified multiple times.

• --trace=<regex-match>

  Enable trace based on regular expression trace name. By default, the trace is disabled. User must specify this option to enable trace. For example:

  Global trace configuration for EAL only:

  --trace=eal
  

  Global trace configuration for ALL the components:

  --trace=.*
  

  Can be specified multiple times up to 32 times.

• --trace-dir=<directory path>

  Specify trace directory for trace output. For example:

  Configuring /tmp/ as a trace output directory:

  --trace-dir=/tmp
  

  By default, trace output will created at home directory and parameter must be specified once only.

• --trace-bufsz=<val>

  Specify maximum size of allocated memory for trace output for each thread. Valid unit can be either B or K or M for Bytes, KBytes and MBytes respectively. For example:

  Configuring 2MB as a maximum size for trace output file:

  --trace-bufsz=2M
  

  By default, size of trace output file is 1MB and parameter must be specified once only.

• --trace-mode=<o[verwrite] | d[iscard] >

  Specify the mode of update of trace output file. Either update on a file can be wrapped or discarded when file size reaches its maximum limit. For example:

  To discard update on trace output file:

  --trace-mode=d or --trace-mode=discard
  

  Default mode is overwrite and parameter must be specified once only.

5.1.6. Other options

• -h, --help

  Display help message listing all EAL parameters.

• -v

  Display the version information on startup.

• --mbuf-pool-ops-name:

  Pool ops name for mbuf to use.

• --telemetry:

Enable telemetry (enabled by default).

• --no-telemetry:

Disable telemetry.

• --force-max-simd-bitwidth=<val>:

Specify the maximum SIMD bitwidth size to handle. This limits which vector paths, if any, are taken, as any paths taken must use a bitwidth below the max bitwidth limit. For example, to allow all SIMD bitwidths up to and including AVX-512:

--force-max-simd-bitwidth=512

The following example shows limiting the bitwidth to 64-bits to disable all vector code:

--force-max-simd-bitwidth=64

To disable use of max SIMD bitwidth limit:

--force-max-simd-bitwidth=0

5.2. FreeBSD-specific EAL parameters

There are currently no FreeBSD-specific EAL command-line parameters available.