Starting with the latest document “Mellanox_FreeBSD_User_Manual_v3.0.0.pdf” i got stuck on missing symbol in bmake.
Searching found much has happened since 2015 - the publish date of above, e.g.
[base] Revision 291072 Making sure you're not a bot!
To summarize, current release FreeBSD 11.1 has built-in drivers for mlx5, however not loaded by default install. To install, do:
Append to /boot/loader.conf
hw.pci.honor_msi_blacklist=“0” # this is required on VMware
mlx5en_load=“YES”
Verify
no MLX driver
pciconf -lcv | grep 15b3
→ none2@pci0:19:0:0: class=“0x020000” card=0x000315b3 chip=0x101615b3 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
with mlx5 driver
pciconf -lcv | grep 15b3
→ mlx5_core0@pci0:11:0:0: class=“0x020000” card=0x000315b3 chip=0x101615b3 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
ifconfig mce0
→ media: Ethernet autoselect <full-duplex,rxpause,txpause> (10GBase-CR1 <full-duplex,rxpause>)
status: active
Note: this is a FreeBSD guest on ESXi 6.5 with Virtual Ethernet using SR-IOV.
Perhaps the User Manual can be updated to reflect all the hard work that has been done in 2015 to get the driver into the official distro :-)