User Manual

Rev 2.3-1.0.1

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

Usage

./mnt/mlnxofedinstall [OPTIONS]

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.

The “mlnx_add_kernel_support.sh” script can be executed directly from the mlnxofedinstall

script. For further information, please see

'--add-kernel-support' option below.

On Ubuntu and Debian distributions drivers installation use Dynamic Kernel Module

Support (DKMS) framework. Thus, the drivers' compilation will take place on the host

during MLNX_OFED installation.

Therefore, using "mlnx_add_kernel_support.sh" is irrelevant on Ubuntu and

Debian distributions.

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