Vector SIL Kit Adapters for QEMU

This collection of software is provided to illustrate how the Vector SIL Kit can be attached to running QEMU processes.

This repository contains instructions to create, set up, and launch a QEMU image, and a minimal development environment.

The main contents are working examples of necessary software to connect the running system to a SIL Kit environment, as well as complimentary demo applications for some communication to happen.

Getting Started

Those instructions assume you use WSL (Ubuntu) or a Linux OS for running QEMU and building and running the adapter (nevertheless it is also possible to do this directly on a Windows system, with the exception of setting up the QEMU image), and use bash as your interactive shell.

This section specifies steps you should do if you have just cloned the repository.

Before any of those topics, please change your current directory to the top-level in the sil-kit-adapters-qemu repository:

cd /path/to/sil-kit-adapters-qemu

Fetch Third Party Software

The first thing that you should do is initializing the submodules to fetch the required third party software:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Otherwise clone the standalone version of asio manually:

git clone --branch asio-1-18-2 https://github.com/chriskohlhoff/asio.git third_party/asio

Build the Adapters and Demos

To build the adapters and demos, you'll need a SIL Kit package SilKit-x.y.z-$platform for your platform. You can download them directly from Vector SIL Kit Releases. The easiest way would be to download it with your web browser, unzip it and place it on your Windows file system, where it also can be accessed by WSL.

The adapters and demos are built using cmake:

mkdir build
cmake -S. -Bbuild -DSILKIT_PACKAGE_DIR=/path/to/SilKit-x.y.z-$platform/ -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --parallel

Note (1): If you have installed a self-built version of SIL Kit, you can build the adapter against it by setting SILKIT_PACKAGE_DIR to the installation path, where the bin, include and lib directories are.

Note (2)(for Windows only): SIL Kit (v4.0.19 and above) is available on Windows with an (.msi) installation file. If you want to build the adapters agains this installed version of SIL Kit, you can generate the build files without specifying any path for SIL Kit as it will be found automatically by CMAKE, e.g:

 mkdir build
 cmake -S. -Bbuild
 cmake --build build --parallel

If you want to force building the adapter against a specific version of SIL Kit (e.g. a downloaded SIL Kit released package), you can do this by setting the SILKIT_PACKAGE_DIR variable according to your preference as shown in the default case.

The adapter and demo executables will be available in build/bin (depending on the configured build directory). Additionally the SilKit shared library (e.g., SilKit[d].dll on Windows) is copied to that directory automatically.

Run the SilKitAdapterQemu

This application allows the user to attach simulated ethernet interface (nic) and/or character devices (e.g. SPI) of a QEMU virtual machine to the SIL Kit.

The application uses the socket backend provided by QEMU. It can be configured for the QEMU virtual machine using the following command line arguments of QEMU:

-netdev socket,listen=:12345
-chardev socket,server=on,wait=off,host=0.0.0.0,port=23456

The arguments of listen= and hots=&port= specifies a TCP socket endpoint on which QEMU will listen for incoming connections, which SilKitAdapterQemu will establish.

All outgoing ethernet frames on that particular virtual ethernet interface inside of the virtual machine are sent to all connected clients. Any incoming data from any connected clients is presented to the virtual machine as an incoming ethernet frame on the virtual interface. All characters sent to the SPI associated to the chardev will be sent to the topic specified to SilKitAdapterQemu. All characters published on the subscribed topic by SilKitAdapterQemu will be sent to the SPI of the guest.

Before you start the adapter there always needs to be a sil-kit-registry running already. Start it e.g. like this:

./path/to/SilKit-x.y.z-$platform/SilKit/bin/sil-kit-registry --listen-uri 'silkit://0.0.0.0:8501'

The application takes the following command line arguments (defaults in curly braces if you omit the switch):

SilKitAdapterQemu [--name <participant's name{SilKitAdapterQemu}>]
  [--registry-uri silkit://<host{localhost}>:<port{8501}>]
  [--log <Trace|Debug|Warn|{Info}|Error|Critical|off>]
 [[--socket-to-ethernet <host>:<port>,network=<network's name>[:<controller's name>]]]
 [[--socket-to-chardev
     <host>:<port>,
    [<namespace>::]<toChardev topic name>[~<subscriber's name>]
       [[,<label key>:<optional label value>
        |,<label key>=<mandatory label value>
       ]],
    [<namespace>::]<fromChardev topic name>[~<publisher's name>]
       [[,<label key>:<optional label value>
        |,<label key>=<mandatory label value>
       ]]
 ]]

There needs to be at least one --socket-to-chardev or --socket-to-ethernet argument. Each socket must be unique.

Example: Here is an example that runs the Chardev adapter and demonstrates several forms of parameters that the adapter takes into account:

SilKitAdapterQemu --name ChardevAdapter --socket-to-chardev localhost:12345,ChardevDemo::toChardev,VirtualNetwork=Default,ChardevDemo::fromChardev,VirtualNetwork:Default

In the example, localhost and port 12345 are used to establish a socket connection between the adapter and the QEMU instance where the Character Device is running. On SIL Kit side, the adapter has ChardevAdapter as a participant name and uses the default values for the SIL Kit URI connection. It subscribes to toChardev topic and publishes on fromChardev topic.
Both subscriber and publisher are configured with VirtualNetwork label set to Default value. For the subscriber it is a Required label due to the = while the publisher one is Optional due to the :. The subscriber requires the Namespace label be set to ChardevDemo. The publisher has the optional Namespace label set to ChardevDemo as well.

Note: Be aware that the QEMU image needs to be running already before you start the adapter application.

Setup QEMU image

With the following instructions you can setup your own QEMU image which can be used for the demos below: tools/README.md

Ethernet Demo

The aim of this demo is to showcase a simple adapter forwarding ethernet traffic from and to the QEMU image through Vector SIL Kit. Traffic being exchanged are ping (ICMP) requests, and the answering device replies only to them.

This demo is further explained in eth/README.md.

Chardev Demo

This demo application allows the user to attach a simulated character device (chardev) interface (pipe) of a QEMU image to the SIL Kit in the form of a DataPublisher/DataSubscriber.

This demo is further explained in chardev/README.md.