Broken github repo link

[jacaato]

In lab5 there is a command to clone repository with rpc-plugin.

git clone git@github.com:nubificus/vaccel-plugin-rpc.git

But this repository is not available.

Could you please fix this?

[ananos]

Hi @jacaato!

thanks for your interest in vAccel! You can grab the binaries of the rpc plugin from our s3 repos. Take a look at the docs: https://docs.vaccel.org/latest/plugins/available-plugins/transport-plugins/rpc-plugin/#installing-the-plugin

Feel free to share what you're trying to achieve, we will be more than happy to guide you through setting up vAccel for your particular use-case.

thanks!

[jacaato]

Hello @ananos!

Thank you for your response!

What we are trying to achieve is to use Vaccel on custom-yocto built linux with unikraft running on in (using qemu). There is Xilinx hardware with arm64 underneath. So We decided to use Vaccel for routing acceleration between linux and unikraft, because there was a source code for all required components.

What we need is to compile rcp-plugin using our own SDK (which is delivered by yocto), so it is compatible with rest of libraries. Right now the precompiled plugin has a different version of curl (minor version, but it is enough for it to stop working).

[ananos]

thanks for the detailed info @jacaato! I'll try to summarize to make sure I understand.

You are setting up a linux system on Xilinx hardware (arm64). On top of that you are running unikraft with qemu. And you would like to use vAccel to expose hardware acceleration functionality to the unikraft unikernel, right?

IIRC, AF_VSOCK support is not present in unikraft, so the RPC plugin won't work. This is why our own tests with unikraft were done using the virtio plugin with a custom qemu (that has the vAccel backend embedded). See https://github.com/nubificus/vaccel-tutorials/tree/main/lab5#vaccel-virtio-plugin for the linux case, and https://github.com/nubificus/qemu-vaccel/tree/unikraft_vaccelrt for the qemu patches with unikraft. However, bear in mind this is with a really old (unmaintained) version of vAccel, so it most probably won't work -- just to give you an idea.

Regardless, the RPC plugin uses Rust bindings which, if I understand correctly, would be a PITA trying to build/run them on unikraft.

We are in the process of building a more lightweight version, compatible with unikraft, and without the rust bindings, to make it easier for integration with embedded use-cases. Happy to share more info once we get a first working prototype!

Hope that helps!

[jacaato]

Yes, you understand the case correctly :)

1. As for the protocol, we are currently using tcp (for the sake of simplicity), we have a communication between host and unikernel established. So, this shouldn't be much harder than our noop POC using PC and raspi (not considering performance rn).
2. There are couple of rust examples in unikraft example catalog, they compile out-of-the-box (almost), but that is not what we need:
3. Actually, what we need is to build the rcp-plugin.so but using our SDK (so everything will be compatible) and put it in the rootfs of unikernel. We really only need the same .so that you provide, but compiled with the right environment.
4. Just to clarify - our app is written in C++.

And we will be more than happy to test the prototype when ready :)