User Manual

mlxburn - FW Image Generator & BurnerRev 1.50
Mellanox Technologies
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2 mlxburn - FW Image Generator & Burner
2.1 Overview
mlxburn is a tool for firmware (FW) image generation and/or for burning a firmware image to the
Flash/EEPROM attached to a Mellanox device. Both functions or a single function of mlxburn can
be activated by means of command line options (see Section 2.3, “mlxburn Synopsis”). It can also
query for firmware attributes (e.g., firmware version, GUIDs, etc.) and VPD info of adapter cards
and switch systems.
mlxburn allows for cusomization of standard Mellanox firmware for OEM specific needs (e.g., a
specific adapter board type). See Section 2.2.1, “Firmware Customization,” on page 13.
2.2 Firmware Generation and Burning with mlxburn
The mlxburn firmware update flow is composed of two separate stages: image generation and
image burning. In the image generation stage, a given Mellanox firmware release (in .mlx format
for adapters, bridges and 4th generation switches, and in .BIN file format for InfiniScale III
switches) is processed together with a board-specific configuration (.ini) file to generate a ‘burn-
able’ firmware image. This image is burnt to the Flash/EERPROM attached to a Mellanox device
in the second stage. The burning process retains device specific data such as GUIDs, UIDs, MACs,
VSD, and BSN. Also, the burn process is failsafe by default.
On VMware ESX Server 3.5, you must use mlxburn with the ‘-ul’ flag.
Figure 2: FW Generation and Burning