Subject: Re: New commands to configure IOV features

From: Don Dutile <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 10:03:43 -0400

On 07/20/2012 07:42 PM, Chris Friesen wrote:
> On 07/20/2012 02:01 PM, Ben Hutchings wrote:
>> On Fri, 2012-07-20 at 13:29 -0600, Chris Friesen wrote:
>
>>> Once the device exists, then domain-specific APIs would be used to
>>> configure it the same way that they would configure a physical device.
>>
>> To an extent, but not entirely.
>>
>> Currently, the assigned MAC address and (optional) VLAN tag for each
>> networking VF are configured via the PF net device (though this is done
>> though the rtnetlink API rather than ethtool).
>
> I actually have a use-case where the guest needs to be able to modify the MAC addresses of network devices that are actually VFs.
>
> The guest is bonding the network devices together, so the bonding driver in the guest expects to be able to set all the slaves to the same MAC address.
>
> As I read the ixgbe driver, this should be possible as long as the host hasn't explicitly set the MAC address of the VF. Is that correct?
>
> Chris

Interesting tug of war: hypervisors will want to set the macaddrs for security reasons,
                         some guests may want to set macaddr for (valid?) config reasons.