Does anyone know a way around building the OFED driver so it relies on just the major version part, not the whole thing?

Infrastructure & Networking Software And Drivers
1

The OFED driver needs to be built against the full kernel (major and minor) release version.

For example, this kernel update was just delivered to our systems: 4.15.0-91-generic.

With the next reboot this kernel gets installed, which breaks the OFED driver and has to be re-built against that new kernel. It would be nice if a rebuild was only needed if the major part is upgraded (e.g. 4.15 to 4.16), and not the minor (-91) patch.

2

Hi David,

In order to answer your question , need to seperate 2 scenarios:

  1. If you are using “inbox driver” that is part of the OS , then the kernel upgrade will compile the “inbox driver” automatically.

  2. In case you are using the full version of “Mellanox OFED” then after each upgrade need to compile the current OFED with the new kernel, if i understand correctly the current OFED in your setup is compiled with the old kernel and this is expected.

Next step would be reinstalling OFED with the flag : ./mlnxofedinstall --add-kernel-support

Thanks,

Samer

3

Thanks Samer,

I do currently build like the second option you’ve outlined. I’m using Ubuntu 18.04 and

I didn’t think there was an In-Box version for that. Does the in-box driver have a dependency

to a 5.x kernel, mine, as I stated, is 4.15.

If there is an in-box for my system, do you have the information of how to Install the driver?

I’d much rather do that!

Regards,

David

4

Hi David,

Please refer to the below link from Mellannox or contact Ubuntu support

https://www.mellanox.com/products/adapter-software/ethernet/inbox-drivers

Thanks,

Samer

5

Yeah, I’ve certainly seen those doc’s before, but these are no help for the OFED issue I’m trying to resolve. It refers to the OFED documentation, which is the second installation option you’ve highlighted. All this leads back to the original question… how to avoid needing to build the driver for every minor kernel patch?? There must be a solution to this, this would never be acceptable in a production environment… or are you saying that Ubuntu is the issue here? Looking at the latest docs you pointed me at, also says to refer to the OFED documentation, so I’m not able to tell if anything has really changed there. Do you know if this does improve with later Ubuntu or Kernel versions?

thanks!

6

Hi David,

I understand your issue.

from Mellanox side we recommend to always reinstall the driver as

Sometimes such kernel upgrades can cause issues since the driver was compiled with old kernel ,

to avoid this MLNX-OFED should be re-installed.

Thanks,

Samer

7

Well, thanks for the responses Samer. I’m going to have to remove the OFED stuff and find another alternative. This isn’t feasible for shipping things to customers.

best,

david