How can I monitor real-time traffic (like tcpdump) while running DOCA eth_l2_fwd?

Infrastructure & Networking BlueField
1

Hi

I’m testing DOCA eth_l2_fwd on my BlueField-2 DPU (DOCA 3.1) and I’d like to know how I can see the traffic in real time — something similar to what tcpdump does.

I’m running the sample like this:

sudo ./doca_eth_l2_fwd -d mlx5_1,mlx5_0 -o 1

The application starts forwarding packets fine, and I can see the RX/TX statistics in the log, for example:

RX-packets: 2304
TX-packets: 0
RX-pps: 22
TX-pps: 0

But I’d like to actually see the packets going through — the headers, MAC addresses, or payloads — to confirm what’s being forwarded.

Is there any recommended way to do that while eth_l2_fwd is running?
Can I use tcpdump on one of the representor interfaces (like pf0hpf, etc.) on the DPU?
Or does DOCA or DPDK have any tool or option to capture packets for debugging?

Any advice or example would be really helpful. Thanks!