User Manual

Rev 1.50

Mellanox Technologies

mlxburn runs both stages by default, but it may perform only one by means of command options.

If the ‘-wrimage’ is specified (see Section 2.3, “mlxburn Synopsis”), only image generation is per-

formed. Specifying the ‘-image’ option skips the image generation stage and loads the provided

image (generated in a previous run of mlxburn using the

‘-wrimage’ option).

2.2.1 Firmware Customization

A Mellanox firmware image can be customized (usually) to fit a specific board type. The custom-

ization is done by using a FW parameter-set file in the image generation stage. This file has a .ini

format. Each parameter-set file has a unique parameter-set ID (PSID), which is kept in the device

Flash/EEPROM and allows retaining device configuration during future FW updates.

During a device FW update, mlxburn reads the PSID from the device and uses the corresponding

.ini file when generating the FW image. mlxburn searches for the files in the same directory of the

FW release. When mlxburn is used to generate an image file, or when no corresponding parame-

ter-set file is found, the user should explicitly specify which parameter-set file to use.

To produce an image file the user needs to provide the option ‘-wrimage <target file>’. To actually

burn the image to the Flash/EEPROM attached to a Mellanox adapter or switch device, the user

needs to specify the option ‘-dev <mst device>’ (see the synopsis section below).

If run in burning mode, mlxburn auto-detects the firmware parameter-set with which the device

was previously burnt. It locates and uses this parameter-set file to generate the appropriate image

for the device (by merging the FW release with the specific parameter-set required).

To inhibit image generation, the ‘-image <pre-generated-image-file>’ should be used. It instructs

mlxburn to use the given file for burning the device.

2.3 mlxburn Synopsis

mlxburn

where:

-h - Display a short help text

-v - Print version info and exit

-V <INFORM|WARNING|DEBUG> - Set the verbosity level. Default is WARNING.

-dev <mst-dev> - Burn the image using the given MST device

When generating an image file for a Mellanox InfiniScale III switch device, the pro-

duced image file name must end with a .img extension

[-h][-v] <-dev mst-device|-wrimage fw-image> <-fw mellanox-fw-file|-image fw-image|-img_dir

img_direcory|-fw_dir fw_dir> [-conf fw-conf-file][-nofs][-nofs_img][-format BINARY|IMAGE][-

dev_type device-type] [-exp_rom <exp_rom_file>][-exp_rom_dir <exp_rom_dir>][-force][-conf_dir

<conf_dir>][-fwver] [-vpd][-vpd_rw][-vpd_prog_rw <rw-keywords-file>][-vpd_set_keyword <keyword-

assignment>] [-set_pxe_en <(port1|port2)=(enable|disable)>] [-query][-ul]