Mellanox Technologies Mellanox ConnectX EN PXE Release Notes ====================================== Rev 1.5.5, December 2009 Contents: --------- 1. General 2. Supported Drivers and Firmware 3. Tested Platforms 4. Package Contents 5. New Features and Changes 6. Known Issues 1. General ---------- These are the release notes for "Mellanox ConnectX EN PXE", the software for Boot over Mellanox Technologies Ethernet adapter devices. ConnectX EN PXE enables booting kernels or operating systems (OS) from remote servers in compliance with the PXE specification. This package is based on the open source project Etherboot/gPXE available at http://www.etherboot.org. The package supports all ConnectX® Network Adapter devices and cards. Specifically, adapter products responding to the following PCI Device IDs are supported: - Decimal 25408 (Hexadecimal: 6340) - Decimal 25418 (Hexadecimal: 634a) - Decimal 26418 (Hexadecimal: 6732) - Decimal 26428 (Hexadecimal: 673c) - Decimal 26438 (Hexadecimal: 6746) - Decimal 25448 (Hexadecimal: 6368) - Decimal 26448 (Hexadecimal: 6750) - Decimal 26468 (Hexadecimal: 6372) - Decimal 26478 (Hexadecimal: 676e) - Decimal 26488 (Hexadecimal: 6778) - Decimal 25458 (Hexadecimal: 6372) - Decimal 26458 (Hexadecimal: 675A) 2. Supported Drivers and Firmware --------------------------------- - ConnectX and ConnectX-2 Firmware fw-25408 version 2.7.000 and above - MLNX_EN ConnectX Driver version 1.4.2 and above - MFT (Mellanox Firmware Tools) version 2.6.0 and above 3. Tested Platforms ------------------- Server Vendor & Model BIOS Manuf. & Version DELL PE 2970 DELL 1.2.2 DELL PE 2950 DELL 1.2.0 DELL PE 1950 DELL 2.5.0 DELL PE 1850 DELL A04 DELL PE SC1435 Phoenix 1.1.2 DELL PE R610 DELL 1.1 DELL PE R510 DELL 0.1.4 DELL M605 Blade DELL 3.0.3 DELL M600 Blade DELL 2.0.4 HP ProLiant DL 360-G5 HP P58 HP ProLiant DL 145-G2 HP 2.16 HP ProLiant DL 380-G5 HP P56 HP ProLiant DL 365-G1 HP A10 HP ProLiant DL 380-G6 HP P62 HP ProLiant DL 160-G6 HP 033 HP ProLiant DL 360-G6 HP P64 HP ProLiant BL460c G1 Blade HP I15 HP ProLiant BL465C Blade HP A13 IBM SystemX 3550 IBM GFE144AUS-1.14 IBM SystemX 3455 IBM C0E135AUS-1.35 IBM DX360 M2 Twin IBM 1.03 IBM 326m IBM P4E125AUS-1.25 IBM HS22 Blade IBM IBM LS21 Blade IBM BAE118AUS-1.00 IBM HS21 Blade IBM BCE115EUS-1.04 Supermicro X7DWT Gen2 Twin Phoenix 1.2b 4. Package Contents ------------------- The ConnectX EN PXE package is provided as a tarball (.tgz extension) containing the following files: 1. A PXE ROM image file for each of the supported Mellanox network adapter devices. Specifically, the following images are included: - CONNECTX_EN_25408_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_25418_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_26418_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_26428_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_26438_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_25448_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_26448_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_26468_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_26478_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_26488_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_25458_ROM-.rom - CONNECTX_EN_26458_ROM-.rom where the number after the "CONNECTX_EN_" prefix indicates the corresponding PCI Device ID of the ConnectX EN / ConnectX-2 EN device. 2. A docs/ directory with the following files: - Mellanox_ConnectX_EN_PXE_User_Manual.pdf - user's manual - ConnectX_EN_PXE_release_notes.txt - this release notes file - undionly.patch - this is a patch for building undionly.kpxe (see "Known Issues" below) 5. New Features and Changes --------------------------- - Added support for ConnectX-2 devices - Improved support for non-PnP BIOSs - Bug fix: ConnectX EN PXE now supports a retry boot operation 6. Known Issues --------------- - Unsupported platforms: o PPC - Running the device with PXE abilities requires PCI ROM space. Some platforms (other than those listed in the "Tested Platforms" section) may not make such space available for PXE boot. This may prevent the proper boot via Mellanox ConnectX EN PXE or even other boot media. - Once the machine reaches the state "POST" (after BIOS execution), the user will be prompted to press CTRL-B to invoke Mellanox ConnectX EN PXE CLI. On some BIOSs invoking the CLI may not work properly. This may occur if not all BIOS parameters have been configured at the time of invoking the CLI. Workaround: Skip invoking CLI at the POST stage. Instead, invoke CLI after ConnectX EN PXE starts booting (you will be prompted to enter CTRL-B). - The Etherboot/gPXE project includes other features that have not been tested on Mellanox ConnectX EN PXE. For example, HTTP boot and AOE boot. If you wish to try using those features, perform the following steps: 1. Download the Etherboot/gPXE project from http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/download?DokuWiki=e2bce2819bac0496a177517a8c45ebc5 2. Compile the expansion ROM by running "make bin/mt.ROM" from the src/ directory, where is one of the decimal PCI Device IDs listed in Section 1 above, which is appropriate for the adapter card. For example: > make bin/mt25448.ROM 3. Burn the expansion ROM as described in the section "Burning the Expansion ROM Image" of the Mellanox ConnectX EN PXE User's Manual. - PXE Chainloading: If you wish to use PXE chainloading as described at http://etherboot.org/wiki/pxechaining, then you need to apply the patch undionly.patch before building with "make bin/undionly.kpxe". The patch file resides under the docs/ directory of the installed ConnectX EN PXE package. - To install iSCSI over currently available Linux distributions, a connection to the client is required via both a LAN and a ConnectX Ethernet port. Future Linux OS distributions may include the ConnectX EN driver, thus an iSCSI installation will not require a LAN to access the iSCSI target. In other words, it will be possible to perform the iSCSI installation directly through the ConnectX EN.