User Manual
Rev 2.1-1.0.6
Mellanox Technologies
228
A.8 Diskless Machines
Mellanox FlexBoot supports booting diskless machines. To enable using an IB/ETH driver, the
initrd image must include a device driver module and be configured to load that driver.
This can be achieved by adding the device driver module into the
initrd image and loading it.
A.8.1 Case I: InfiniBand Ports
The IB driver requires loading the following modules in the specified order (see Section A.8.1.1
for an example):
• ib_addr.ko
• ib_core.ko
• ib_mad.ko
• ib_sa.ko
• ib_cm.ko
• ib_uverbs.ko
• ib_ucm.ko
• ib_umad.ko
• iw_cm.ko
• rdma_cm.ko
• rdma_ucm.ko
• mlx4_core.ko
• mlx4_ib.ko
• ib_mthca.ko
• ipoib_helper.ko – this module is not required for all OS kernels. Please check the
release notes.
• ib_ipoib.ko
A.8.1.1 Example: Adding an IB Driver to initrd (Linux)
Prerequisites
1. The FlexBoot image is already programmed on the HCA card.
2. The DHCP server is installed and configured as described in Section 4.3.3.1, “IPoIB Config-
uration Based on DHCP”, and is connected to the client machine.
3. An initrd file.
The ‘initrd’ image of some Linux distributions such as SuSE Linux Enterprise
Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, cannot be edited prior or during the installation
process.
If you need to install Linux distributions over Flexboot, please replace your
‘initrd’
images with the images found at:
www.mellanox.com > Products > Adapter IB/VPI SW > FlexBoot (Download Tab).