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Oracle Linux support for older Sunfire server hardware

Billy VerreynneOct 29 2018 — edited Nov 8 2018

We have a bunch of older Sun servers (Sunfire models), with OL6 and OL7 kernels not seeming to support the server h/w (Mellanox Infiniband and NVidia Ethernet specifically).

I tried OL6 on these servers, but the Mellanox Cougar Cub (PCI Infiniband) cards failed to work (were not detected). Installing OL5 resulted in a working Infiniband layer. Server details:

[root@old-rac-03 ~]# dmidecode -t1

# dmidecode 2.12

SMBIOS 2.3 present.

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 25 bytes

System Information

        Manufacturer: Sun Microsystems

        Product Name: Sun Fire X4100 Server

        Version:                                

        Serial Number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

        UUID: FF200008-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FCFF394F1400

        Wake-up Type: Power Switch

[root@old-rac-03 ~]#

[root@old-rac-03 ~]# lspci | grep -i infiniband

07:00.0 InfiniBand: Mellanox Technologies MT23108 InfiniHost (rev a1)

[root@old-rac-03 ~]#

[root@old-rac-03 ~]# lspci -vv -s 07:00

07:00.0 InfiniBand: Mellanox Technologies MT23108 InfiniHost (rev a1)

        Subsystem: Mellanox Technologies MT23108 InfiniHost

        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-

        Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-

        Latency: 64, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes

        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 37

        Region 0: Memory at ed800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]

        Region 2: Memory at fe000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=8M]

        Region 4: Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]

        Capabilities: [40] MSI-X: Enable- Count=32 Masked-

                Vector table: BAR=0 offset=00082000

                PBA: BAR=0 offset=00082200

        Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data

                Product Name: Cougar cub

                Read-only fields:

                        [PN] Part number: 99-00025-01

                        [EC] Engineering changes: Rev: C04

                        [SN] Serial number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

                        [V0] Vendor specific: PW=12W;PCI 66MHZ;PCI-X 133MHZ

                        [V2] Vendor specific: 0449

                        [RV] Reserved: checksum good, 0 byte(s) reserved

                Read/write fields:

                        [V1] Vendor specific: N/A  

                        [YA] Asset tag: N/A                            

                        [RW] Read-write area: 94 byte(s) free

                End

        Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable- Count=1/32 Maskable- 64bit+

                Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000

        Capabilities: [70] PCI-X non-bridge device

                Command: DPERE- ERO- RBC=512 OST=2

                Status: Dev=07:00.0 64bit+ 133MHz+ SCD- USC- DC=simple DMMRBC=4096 DMOST=2 DMCRS=8 RSCEM- 266MHz- 533MHz-

        Kernel driver in use: ib_mthca

        Kernel modules: ib_mthca

[root@old-rac-03 ~]#

[root@old-rac-03 ~]# ibstat

CA 'mthca0'

        CA type: MT23108

        Number of ports: 2

        Firmware version: 3.5.917

        Hardware version: a1

        Node GUID: 0x0005ad0000035a3c

        System image GUID: 0x0005ad000100d050

        Port 1:

                State: Active

                Physical state: LinkUp

                Rate: 10

                Base lid: 7

                LMC: 0

                SM lid: 2

                Capability mask: 0x02510a68

                Port GUID: 0x0005ad0000035a3d

                Link layer: IB

        Port 2:

                State: Active

                Physical state: LinkUp

                Rate: 10

                Base lid: 4

                LMC: 0

                SM lid: 2

                Capability mask: 0x02510a68

                Port GUID: 0x0005ad0000035a3e

                Link layer: IB

[root@old-rac-03 ~]#

Last week I dusted off some older Sunfire servers for lab work. Installed OL7, resulting in no NIC devices for configuring the network. Installed OL6, and all 4 NVidia Ethernet ports were detected, and available. Server details:

[root@lab2 ~]# dmidecode -t1

# dmidecode 2.12

SMBIOS 2.5 present.

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes

System Information

        Manufacturer: Sun Microsystems   

        Product Name: Sun Fire X4140

        Version:    

        Serial Number: xxxxxxxxxxxxx             

        UUID: 080020FF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-44F8ED4F1400

        Wake-up Type: Power Switch

        SKU Number: 4151844-1      

        Family: Sun Fire X86 Server

[root@lab2 ~]#

[root@lab2 ~]# lspci | grep -i ethernet

00:08.0 Bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)

00:09.0 Bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)

80:08.0 Bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)

80:09.0 Bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)

[root@lab2 ~]#

[root@lab2 ~]# lspci  -v -s *:0:08

00:08.0 Bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)

        Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device cb84

        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 37

        Memory at defba000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]

        I/O ports at 8400 [size=8]

        Memory at defbe800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]

        Memory at defbe400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16]

        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

        Capabilities: [70] MSI-X: Enable- Count=8 Masked-

        Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/8 Maskable+ 64bit+

        Capabilities: [6c] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping Enable- Fixed+

        Kernel driver in use: forcedeth

[root@lab2 ~]#

[root@lab2 ~]# ethtool --driver eth0

driver: forcedeth

version: 0.64

firmware-version:

bus-info: 0000:00:08.0

supports-statistics: yes

supports-test: yes

supports-eeprom-access: no

supports-register-dump: yes

supports-priv-flags: no

[root@lab2 ~]#

Would be great if later OL kernel versions can be used, supporting this older hardware.

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Added on Oct 29 2018
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