I recently ordered two Mellanox ConnectX-2 cards online and installed them into two servers at home, both running Ubuntu 16.04 with the 4.4.0-141 Linux kernel. I want to directly connect these two cards so the servers can have a fast transfer rate between them directly.
Looking at lshw, lspci, ethtool and ifconfig, the cards seem to be installed, up, and configured correctly - see screenshots attached - but I just cannot get a link up between them. I thought it might have been a dodgy cable, so ordered another one and that one doesn’t work either.
Is it a driver issue? The driver mlx4_core seems to be loaded correctly by both machines.
I’m completely stumped here, and hoping someone else can spot something I might be missing, or tell me that I’ve gone about this the wrong way entirely!
You did not indicate if & what mlnx_ofed you installed, or are you using Linux inbox driver, anyway, in both cases, the “latest” mlnx_ofed driver & fw that supports Ubuntu 16.04 along with ConnectX-2 adapter is MLNX_OFED_Linux_3.4-2.0.0.0 & fw v2.9.1000 can be downloaded from Mellanox web site:
The other thing is that Mellanox long ago declared ConnectX-2 adapters as EOL (end-of-life) and that includes “support EOF” as well, so if you use proper cables and installed driver & fw as suggested above, and link issue still occurs then try to look at old Mellanox articles to see if you can get any clue there
Thank you for your reply! I did look into whether to install a driver or not, but from the above screenshots I posted, it’s clear that Ubuntu OS is recognising the card and loading the v2.2 driver firmware. Therefore, why would it not work? I’ll try to install the latest OFED driver and see if that makes a difference. Re cables, I’ve tried two different SFP+ cables now and both of them didn’t work. Considering both cables were supplied by the vendor bundled with the ConnectX-2 cards, I am assuming they would be compatible but will double-check.
