Explanation of chroot environment for OFED on Debian/Ubuntu distros?

Infrastructure & Networking Software And Drivers
#1

I was reading the install doc of OFED and noticed this for Debian: https://docs.mellanox.com/display/MLNXOFEDv531001/Installing+Mellanox+OFED

MLNX_OFED for Ubuntu should be installed with the following flags in chroot environment:

./mlnxofedinstall --without-dkms --add-kernel-support --kernel --without-fw-update --force

For example:

./mlnxofedinstall --without-dkms --add-kernel-support --kernel 3.13.0-85-generic --without-fw-update --force

Why is there a need to chroot for OFED install?

Could you provide detailed steps on chrooting for this install process to me, and update the documentation as well? Would I have to load a live ubuntu image, chroot on the installed root filesystem just to get OFED installed? That’s a lot of manual steps and makes automated bring up a difficult task

Details:

Running Ubuntu 20.04.1 with a 100GB Mellanox Technologies MT27700 Family [ConnectX-4]

#2

Hi Sam,

That DOESN’T mean need to do much.

In the link which you send. There is an example of command:

./mlnxofedinstall --without-dkms --add-kernel-support --kernel 3.13.0-85-generic --without-fw-update --force

we can use ‘uname -a’ to get the kernel version number.

Regards,

Levei

#3

Thanks for clarifying that, Levei. I guess I got thrown off by the word chroot!