User Manual

Rev 2.2-1.0.1

Mellanox Technologies

2.3 Installing Mellanox OFED

The installation script, mlnxofedinstall, performs the following:

• Discovers the currently installed kernel

• Uninstalls any software stacks that are part of the standard operating system distribution

or another vendor's commercial stack

• Installs the MLNX_OFED_LINUX binary RPMs (if they are available for the current

kernel)

• Identifies the currently installed InfiniBand and Ethernet network adapters and automat-

ically

upgrades the firmware

2.3.1 Pre-installation Notes

• The installation script removes all previously installed Mellanox OFED packages and

re-installs from scratch. You will be prompted to acknowledge the deletion of the old

packages.

Pre-existing configuration files will be saved with the extension “.conf.rpmsave”.

• If you need to install Mellanox OFED on an entire (homogeneous) cluster, a common

strategy is to mount the ISO image on one of the cluster nodes and then copy it to a

shared file system such as NFS. To install on all the cluster nodes, use cluster-aware

tools (such as pdsh).

• If your kernel version does not match with any of the offered pre-built RPMs, you can

add your kernel version by using the

“mlnx_add_kernel_support.sh” script located

under the docs/ directory.

On Redhat and SLES distributions with errata kernel installed there is no need to use the

mlnx_add_kernel_support.sh script. The regular installation can be performed and weak-

updates mechanism will create symbolic links to the MLNX_OFED kernel modules.

Usage:

mlnx_add_kernel_support.sh -m|--mlnx_ofed <path to MLNX_OFED directory> [--make-iso|--

make-tgz]

[--make-iso] Create MLNX_OFED ISO image.

[--make-tgz] Create MLNX_OFED tarball. (Default)

[-t|--tmpdir <local work dir>]

[--kmp] Enable KMP format if supported.

[-k | --kernel] <kernel version> Kernel version to use.

[-s | --kernel-sources] <path to the kernel sources> Path to kernel headers.

[-v|--verbose]

[-n|--name] Name of the package to be created.

[-y|--yes] Answer "yes" to all questions

[--force] Force removing packages that depends on MLNX_OFED

1. The firmware will not be updated if you run the install script with the ‘--without-fw-update’ option.