Compiling and Installing DPDK with the Napatech PMD

Build and install DPDK with the Napatech PMD.

1. Locate the DPDK directory in the unpacked Link-Virtualization™ Software package directory and change to that directory.
   For example:

   cd <package_root_directory>/dpdk-driver/dpdk_<version>

   where:

   • package_root_directory is the directory to the unpacked Napatech package.
   • version is the version identifier of the included DPDK package with the Napatech PMD.
2. Install packages required to build DPDK.

   # Enable the powertools repository.
   subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder*-rpms
   # Install EPEL on RHEL 8
   dnf install \
   https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
   
   # Install meson and ninja-build.
   dnf install meson ninja-build

3. Compile and install DPDK.

   meson build
   ninja -C build
   ninja -C build install

4. Set the pkgconfig path to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable. The path can be found running the following command.

   meson configure

   The path to the installed DPDK libraries is <prefix>/<libdir> where prefix and libdir can be found in the meson configure output as shown in the following example:

   ...
   Directories     Default Value    Possible Values    Description
   -----------     -------------    ---------------    -----------
   prefix          /usr/local                          Installation prefix
   ...
   libdir          lib64                               Library directory
   ...
   

   Set PKG_CONFIG_PATH.

   export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib64/pkgconfig

5. Activate the path to the libraries.

   ldconfig
   
   # Verify
   ldconfig -p | grep librte_net_ntnic

   An output example:

   librte_net_ntnic.so.22 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/local/lib64/librte_net_ntnic.so.22
   librte_net_ntnic.so (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/local/lib64/librte_net_ntnic.so

   Note: On some Linux distributions, such as CentOS, Fedora or RHEL, paths in /usr/local are not in the default path for the dynamic loader. Therefore, add /usr/local/lib and the path to the DPDK libraries to the /etc/ld.so.conf.d/dpdk.conf file before running ldconfig on these distributions. For example:

   echo -e "/usr/local/lib64\n/usr/local/lib64/dpdk" >> \
    /etc/ld.so.conf.d/dpdk.conf
   
   ldconfig

   The path to the DPDK libraries may vary depending on the Linux distribution. See step 4 about how to find the path.