P4_Programming_Setup

This is the repository that tests and sets up P4 program as well as P4RunTime controller.

The repo is still in progress (updated 12/10)

First of all create a new .p4 file in a directory called p4projects

  mkdir p4projects
  cd ./p4projects
  touch hello.p4

You can take the P4 code to test from hello.p4

I. Using docker container for p4c compiler

1. Pull the official P4 compiler image

  docker pull p4lang/p4c:latest

2. Direct to your directory that holds your hello.p4 program and run the Docker p4c container

  cd p4projects
  docker run -it --rm --privileged --network host -v $(pwd):/work p4lang/p4c:latest bash

3. Inside the container, redirect to your pwd mounted on /work

  cd /work

4. Next, compile your P4 code

  p4c -b bmv2 --p4runtime-files build/hello.p4info.txtpb hello.p4 -o build

At this point, you might get the error while loading shared libraries: libboost_iostreams.so.1.71.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. To fix, install the libboost-iostreams1.71.0

  apt-get update && apt-get install -y libboost-iostreams1.71.0

Then, try to compile your P4 program again.

Now, you should see hello.p4 and a directory named build if your code doesn't have bugs.

Inside the build directory, you should see these files as follows:

  hello.json   hello.p4i   hello.p4info.txt   hello.p4info.txtpb

II. Using docker container for BMv2 switch

1. Pull the official behavioral-model image

  docker pull p4lang/behavioral-model

2. Run the Docker container for behavioral-model

  docker run -it --rm --privileged --network host -v $(pwd):/work p4lang/behavioral-model:latest bash

3. Inside the container, redirect to your pwd mounted on /work

  cd /work

4. Check your simple_switch_grpc version, and run the simple_switch_grpc

  simple_switch_grpc --version
  simple_switch_grpc --device-id 0 --log-console build/hello.json

After that, you might get the result as shown below:

  Calling target program-options parser
  Server listening on 0.0.0.0:9559

You must let the switch on when you upload rules from P4Runtime Controller!

III. P4Runtime Controller

Install P4Runtime shell via pip3

  # Install p4runtime-shell package and run it
  pip3 install p4runtime-shell --break-system-packages
  python3 -m p4runtime_sh --grpc-addr <server IP>:<server port> \
    --device-id 0 --election-id 0,1 --config <p4info.txt>,<pipeline config>

Now you can check if there is a line like

  *** Welcome to the IPython shell for P4Runtime ***

then you are good to go. If no error shows up, you have successfully installed P4Runtime!

IV. Testing the interaction of P4Runtime and the simple_switch_grpc via Python script

Make sure that the simple_switch_grpc is ON as stated in section II.

Create a Python file, and run the test code from test_P4.py in another terminal.

If the result shows the connection successfully, that means the connection is good.