<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <body>
    <h1>Host device management</h1>

    <p>
      Libvirt provides management of both physical and virtual host devices
      (historically also referred to as node devices) like USB, PCI, SCSI, and
      network devices. This also includes various virtualization capabilities
      which the aforementioned devices provide for utilization, for example
      SR-IOV, NPIV, DRM, etc.
    </p>

    <p>
      The node device driver provides means to list and show details about host
      devices (<code>virsh nodedev-list</code>,
      <code>virsh nodedev-dumpxml</code>), which are generic and can be used
      with all devices. It also provides means to create and destroy devices
      (<code>virsh nodedev-create</code>, <code>virsh nodedev-destroy</code>)
      which are meant to be used to create virtual devices, currently only
      supported by NPIV
      (<a href="http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/NPIV_in_libvirt">more info about NPIV)</a>).
      Devices on the host system are arranged in a tree-like hierarchy, with
      the root node being called <code>computer</code>. The node device driver
      supports two backends to manage the devices, HAL and udev, with the former
      being deprecated in favour of the latter.
    </p>

    <p>
      The generic format of a host device XML can be seen below.
      To identify a device both within the host and the device tree hierarchy,
      the following elements are used:
    </p>
      <dl>
        <dt><code>name</code></dt>
        <dd>
          The device's name will be generated by libvirt using the subsystem,
          like pci and the device's sysfs basename.
        </dd>
        <dt><code>path</code></dt>
        <dd>
          Fully qualified sysfs path to the device.
        </dd>
        <dt><code>parent</code></dt>
        <dd>
          This element identifies the parent node in the device hierarchy. The
          value of the element will correspond with the device parent's
          <code>name</code> element or <code>computer</code> if the device does
          not have any parent.
        </dd>
        <dt><code>driver</code></dt>
        <dd>
          This elements reports the driver in use for this device. The presence
          of this element in the output XML depends on whether the underlying
          device manager (most likely udev) exposes information about the
          driver.
        </dd>
        <dt><code>capability</code></dt>
        <dd>
          Describes the device in terms of feature support. The element has one
          mandatory attribute <code>type</code> the value of which determines
          the type of the device. Currently recognized values for the attribute
          are:
          <code>system</code>,
          <code>pci</code>,
          <code>usb</code>,
          <code>usb_device</code>,
          <code>net</code>,
          <code>scsi</code>,
          <code>scsi_host</code> (<span class="since">Since 0.4.7</span>),
          <code>fc_host</code>,
          <code>vports</code>,
          <code>scsi_target</code> (<span class="since">Since 0.7.3</span>),
          <code>storage</code> (<span class="since">Since 1.0.4</span>),
          <code>scsi_generic</code> (<span class="since">Since 1.0.7</span>),
          <code>drm</code> (<span class="since">Since 3.1.0</span>), and
          This element can be nested in which case it further specifies a
          device's capability. Refer to specific device types to see more values
          for the <code>type</code> attribute which are exclusive.
        </dd>
      </dl>

    <h2>Basic structure of a node device</h2>
    <pre>
&lt;device&gt;
  &lt;name&gt;pci_0000_00_17_0&lt;/name&gt;
  &lt;path&gt;/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:17.0&lt;/path&gt;
  &lt;parent&gt;computer&lt;/parent&gt;
  &lt;driver&gt;
    &lt;name&gt;ahci&lt;/name&gt;
  &lt;/driver&gt;
  &lt;capability type='pci'&gt;
...
  &lt;/capability&gt;
&lt;/device&gt;</pre>

    <ul id="toc"/>

    <h2><a name="PCI">PCI host devices</a></h2>
    <dl>
      <dt><code>capability</code></dt>
      <dd>
        When used as top level element, the supported values for the
        <code>type</code> attribute are <code>pci</code> and
        <code>phys_function</code> (see <a href="#SRIOVCap">SR-IOV below</a>).
      </dd>
    </dl>
    <pre>
&lt;device&gt;
  &lt;name&gt;pci_0000_04_00_1&lt;/name&gt;
  &lt;path&gt;/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/0000:04:00.1&lt;/path&gt;
  &lt;parent&gt;pci_0000_00_06_0&lt;/parent&gt;
  &lt;driver&gt;
    &lt;name&gt;igb&lt;/name&gt;
  &lt;/driver&gt;
  &lt;capability type='pci'&gt;
    &lt;domain&gt;0&lt;/domain&gt;
    &lt;bus&gt;4&lt;/bus&gt;
    &lt;slot&gt;0&lt;/slot&gt;
    &lt;function&gt;1&lt;/function&gt;
    &lt;product id='0x10c9'&gt;82576 Gigabit Network Connection&lt;/product&gt;
    &lt;vendor id='0x8086'&gt;Intel Corporation&lt;/vendor&gt;
    &lt;iommuGroup number='15'&gt;
      &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x00' function='0x1'/&gt;
    &lt;/iommuGroup&gt;
    &lt;numa node='0'/&gt;
    &lt;pci-express&gt;
      &lt;link validity='cap' port='1' speed='2.5' width='2'/&gt;
      &lt;link validity='sta' speed='2.5' width='2'/&gt;
    &lt;/pci-express&gt;
  &lt;/capability&gt;
&lt;/device&gt;</pre>

    <p>
      The XML format for a PCI device stays the same for any further
      capabilities it supports, a single nested <code>&lt;capability&gt;</code>
      element will be included for each capability the device supports.
    </p>

    <h3><a name="SRIOVCap">SR-IOV capability</a></h3>
    <p>
      Single root input/output virtualization (SR-IOV) allows sharing of the
      PCIe resources by multiple virtual environments. That is achieved by
      slicing up a single full-featured physical resource called physical
      function (PF) into multiple devices called virtual functions (VFs) sharing
      their configuration with the underlying PF. Despite the SR-IOV
      specification, the amount of VFs that can be created on a PF varies among
      manufacturers.
    </p>

    <p>
      Suppose the NIC <a href="#PCI">above</a> was also SR-IOV capable, it would
      also include a nested
      <code>&lt;capability&gt;</code> element enumerating all virtual
      functions available on the physical device (physical port) like in the
      example below.
    </p>

    <pre>
&lt;capability type='pci'&gt;
...
  &lt;capability type='virt_functions' maxCount='7'&gt;
    &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x10' function='0x1'/&gt;
    &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x10' function='0x3'/&gt;
    &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x10' function='0x5'/&gt;
    &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x10' function='0x7'/&gt;
    &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x11' function='0x1'/&gt;
    &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x11' function='0x3'/&gt;
    &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x11' function='0x5'/&gt;
  &lt;/capability&gt;
...
&lt;/capability&gt;</pre>
    <p>
      A SR-IOV child device on the other hand, would then report its top level
      capability type as a <code>phys_function</code> instead:
    </p>

    <pre>
&lt;device&gt;
...
  &lt;capability type='phys_function'&gt;
    &lt;address domain='0x0000' bus='0x04' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/&gt;
  &lt;/capability&gt;
...
&lt;device&gt;</pre>

  </body>
</html>
