P4 BMV2 docker container

After a lot of hussle, I was finally able to run BMV2 (P4 behavioral-switch) in a container. For reproducibility and in order to drastically decrease the container's size, I have created the corresponding Dockerfile

Get the source

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/cslev/p4-bmv2-docker/
$ cd p4-bmv2-docker

Usage

Note the dot (.) at the end of the commands!

pure bmv2 container

$ sudo docker build -t <image_name> .

Or alternatively, pull image from Docker hub (compressed images size 409 MB).

bmv2 + P4runtime capability only

This image has been built accordint to the instructions of https://github.com/p4lang/behavioral-model/tree/master/targets/simple_switch_grpc. This container contains the P4runtime capable simple_switch_grpc and all P4Runtime related libraries but nothing more. For a full-fledged combination check the next section.

$ sudo docker build -t <image_name> -f Dockerfile.p4runtime_pure .

Or alternatively, pull image from Docker hub. During pull, pay attention to the tags, and use tag pure (compressed image size: 2GB).

p4c - development environment

This image has all ingredients for compiling p4 codes with P4Runtime support for software switch (-ss) and PSA (-psa) architecture. Bear in mind that compilation of a P4 code with P4Runtime support to software switch target can be done as follows:

p4c-bm2-ss <path to p4 file> --p4runtime-file <path to p4runtime file output> --p4runtime-format text -o <path to JSON output>

Obtain/create image:

sudo docker build -t <image_name> -f Dockerfile.p4c .

Or alternatively, pull image from Docker hub (compressed image size: 1.8GB).

bmv2 + FULL P4runtime capability [DEPRECATED]

This image might contain too much packages (e.g., nanomsg, thrift, simple_switch, simple_switch_grpc). Check Dockerfile.p4runtime to see whether you need all of these stuffs

$ sudo docker build -t <image_name> -f Dockerfile.p4runtime .

Or alternatively, pull image from Docker hub. During pull, pay attention to the tags, and use tag full (compressed image size: 2GB).

Notes

All Dockerfiles exposes only one respective port, e.g., pure bmv2 exposes 9090, and bmv2-p4runtime images exposes 50051, respectively. In order to add more control ports to your container just define them via docker run --expose=PORTNUM argument. Then, your image is ready to use.

You want to add veth to your container?

Go to this github repository