From: Laurent Vivier <lvivier@redhat.com>
To: passt-dev@passt.top
Cc: Laurent Vivier <lvivier@redhat.com>
Subject: [PATCH 0/2] vhost-user, dhcp: Fix iPXE network boot over vhost-user
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2026 10:02:02 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260403080204.2364581-1-lvivier@redhat.com> (raw)
iPXE network boot over vhost-user was broken because passt
unconditionally skipped TCP/UDP checksum computation, relying on
VIRTIO_NET_HDR_F_DATA_VALID to tell the guest the checksums were
valid. Linux guests happened to work because their virtio-net driver
honours DATA_VALID regardless of feature negotiation, but iPXE
verifies checksums strictly and never negotiates VIRTIO_NET_F_GUEST_CSUM.
This series handles correctly VIRTIO_NET_F_GUEST_CSUM feature to fix that
and adds a minimal --dhcp-boot option that populates the BOOTP/DHCP 'file'
field, providing just enough for testing iPXE UDP and TCP support.
This can be tested as following:
- Create an ipxe file configuration
cat > boot-alpine.ipxe <<EOF
kernel http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.23/releases/x86_64/netboot/vmlinuz-lts console=ttyS0,115200 alpine_repo=http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.23/main modloop=http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.23/releases/x86_64/netboot/modloop-lts
initrd http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.23/releases/x86_64/netboot/initramfs-lts
boot
EOF
- Start a web server in the same directory as boot-alpine.ipxe
python -m http.server 8080
- Start passt:
./passt -f --dhcp-boot http://<host ip address>:8080/boot-alpine.ipxe --vhost-user
- Start QEMU without boot disk but with passt as networking backend
Based-on: 20260401215508.2149752-1-lvivier@redhat.com
Laurent Vivier (2):
vhost_user: Offer VIRTIO_NET_F_GUEST_CSUM
dhcp: Add --dhcp-boot option to set boot filename in DHCP replies
conf.c | 10 ++++++++++
dhcp.c | 5 ++++-
passt.1 | 6 ++++++
passt.h | 1 +
tcp_vu.c | 8 ++++++--
udp_vu.c | 7 ++++---
vhost_user.c | 1 +
7 files changed, 32 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
--
2.53.0
next reply other threads:[~2026-04-03 8:02 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-04-03 8:02 Laurent Vivier [this message]
2026-04-03 8:02 ` [PATCH 1/2] vhost_user: Offer VIRTIO_NET_F_GUEST_CSUM Laurent Vivier
2026-04-03 8:02 ` [PATCH 2/2] dhcp: Add --dhcp-boot option to set boot filename in DHCP replies Laurent Vivier
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