We purchased some ConnectX-6 Dx NICs (CX623106A) from a vendor on eBay. They look legit and appear to operate as the dual 100 GbE NICs they should be. But when we went to update the firmware, the firmware would not update as the cards have a non-standard PSID of CIS0000000008.
Is there a way to flash a standard NVIDIA firmware over this load?
Thank you for that @dwaxman ! I would have guessed CIS ~= âciscoâ, but wouldnât have found the link you provided.
I grabbed the iso from the Cisco site and blew out the file system to see what is in the /firmware/Common/Mellanox_Technologies directories. I found three ConnectX6Dx firmwares as such:
-rw-r--r-- 1 shep shep 3578512 Jun 4 10:38 fw-ConnectX6Dx-rel-22_36_1010-30-100256-01_Ax-UEFI-14.29.14-FlexBoot-3.6.901.signed.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 shep shep 3578496 Jun 4 10:38 fw-ConnectX6Dx-rel-22_36_1010-30-100260-01_Ax-UEFI-14.29.14-FlexBoot-3.6.901.signed.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 shep shep 3579024 Jun 4 10:38 fw-ConnectX6Dx-rel-22_36_1010-30-100309-01_Ax-UEFI-14.29.14-FlexBoot-3.6.901.signed.bin
But when I try flint on any of these, I get a âInvalid Image signatureâ error.
Drats! I really dont want to recreate the whole Cisco update universe.
These boards seem to work fine; just a little uncomfortable not having the mainline Nvidia firmware (or even the latest Cisco-branded fw). Morale of the story - stick with Nvidia NICs bought as Nvidia NICs; as even a legit-looking board from eBay may have other firmware.
Hello, I have the same card also from ebay. Iâm unable to make it work at 100Gb. It is able to connect at 40Gbps and the strangest thing is the switch shows the port as 100Gb.
lshw shows this:
Try flashing to the NVIDIA OEM firmware for the MCX623106AS.
I was able to flash the eBay CIS0000000008 cards to MT_00000000437 by going into âlivefishâ
(flash firmware recovery) mode.
I did the following using the open source flint tools:
use a thin wire to jumper JP7 holes together, but donât short out to any other points on the board
power up the machine
youâll know the jumper is seen by the card because an orange LED will stay lit
get the latest MCX623106AS-CDAT firmware. At this time, the file I got from NVIDIA was fw-ConnectX6Dx-rel-22_39_2048-MCX623106AS-CDA_Ax-UEFI-14.32.17-FlexBoot-3.7.300.signed.bin
figure out the pci address for the card, mine was pci0:1:0:0
when finished, turn off the system and remove the jumper wire
now when you boot up, youâll have the latest NVIDIA signed firmware. the unsigned firmware for MCX623106AN does not work on this card, you wonât be able to boot the card firmware. the crypto firmware for MCX623106AC is reported to work on these cards. (reports from Flashing the Cisco CX623106A NIC to OEM firmware | ServeTheHome Forums)
As Iâm sitting here flashing these eBay cards, Iâm finding the latest NVIDIA mft version of âflintâ works consistently, unlike the mstflint command from the open-source package. The arguments are identical.
Download the mft package from NVIDIA for your Linux/FreeBSD/whatever and use that. Also, one way to find your PCI device string (to use in the -d flag) is to use the âmst statusâ command (from the NVIDIA mft.)
The FreeBSD version of NVIDIA mft requires that you install bash (pkg install bash) and ln -s /usr/local/bin/bash /bin/bash (or fix the scripts themselves.) The scripts are quite sloppy in this way, since FreeBSD does not typically install bash as /bin/bash. It would be nice if someone at NVIDIA would fix them.