Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) Version 1.5 Release Notes December 2009 =============================================================================== Table of Contents =============================================================================== 1. Overview, which includes: - OFED Distribution Rev 1.5 Contents - Supported Platforms and Operating Systems - Supported HCA and RNIC Adapter Cards and Firmware Versions - Tested Switch Platforms - Third party Test Packages - OFED sources 4. Main Changes from OFED 1.4.2 5. Known Issues =============================================================================== 1. Overview =============================================================================== These are the release notes of OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) release 1.5. The OFED software package is composed of several software modules, and is intended for use on a computer cluster constructed as an InfiniBand subnet or iWARP network. Note: If you plan to upgrade the OFED package on your cluster, please upgrade all of its nodes to this new version. 1.1 OFED 1.5 Contents ----------------------- The OFED package contains the following components: - OpenFabrics core and ULPs: - IB HCA drivers (mthca, mlx4, qib, ehca) - iWARP RNIC driver (cxgb3, nes) - core - Upper Layer Protocols: IPoIB, SDP, SRP Initiator and target, iSER Initiator and target, RDS, uDAPL, qlgc_vnic and NFS-RDMA. - OpenFabrics utilities: - OpenSM (OSM): InfiniBand Subnet Manager - Diagnostic tools - Performance tests - MPI: - OSU MPI stack supporting the InfiniBand and iWARP interface - Open MPI stack supporting the InfiniBand and iWARP interface - OSU MVAPICH2 stack supporting the InfiniBand and iWARP interface - MPI benchmark tests (OSU benchmarks, Intel MPI benchmarks, Presta) - Extra packages: - open-iscsi: open-iscsi initiator with iSER support - ib-bonding: Bonding driver for IPoIB interface - Sources of all software modules (under conditions mentioned in the modules' LICENSE files) - Documentation Notes: 1. iSER target and NFS-RDMA is of Beta quality. 2. All other OFED components are of production quality. 3. See release notes for each package in the docs directory. 4. Any Topspin copyright belongs to Cisco Systems, Inc. 1.2 Supported Platforms and Operating Systems --------------------------------------------- o CPU architectures: - x86_64 - x86 - ppc64 - ia64 o Linux Operating Systems: - RedHat EL4 up7 2.6.9-78.ELsmp - RedHat EL4 up8 2.6.9-89.ELsmp - RedHat EL5 up3 2.6.18-128.el5 - RedHat EL5 up4 2.6.18-164.el5 - SLES10 SP2 2.6.16.60-0.21-smp - SLES10 SP3 2.6.16.60-0.54-smp - SLES11 2.6.27.19-5-default - OEL 4 up7 2.6.9-78.ELsmp - OEL 4 up8 2.6.9-89.ELsmp - CentOS5.3 2.6.18-128.el5 - CentOS5.4 2.6.18-164.el5 - Fedora Core12 2.6.31.5-127.fc12 * - OpenSuSE 11.2 2.6.31.5-0.1-default * - kernel.org 2.6.29, 2.6.30, 2.6.31 and 2.6.32 * * Minimal QA for these versions 1.3 HCAs and RNICs Supported ---------------------------- This release supports IB HCAs by Mellanox Technologies, Qlogic and IBM as well as iWARP RNICs by Chelsio Communications and Intel. o Mellanox Technologies HCAs (SDR, DDR and QDR Modes are Supported): - InfiniHost (fw-23108 Rev 3.5.000) - InfiniHost III Ex (MemFree: fw-25218 Rev 5.3.000 with memory: fw-25208 Rev 4.8.200) - InfiniHost III Lx (fw-25204 Rev 1.2.000) - ConnectX IB (fw-25408 Rev 2.7.000) For official firmware versions please see: http://www.mellanox.com/content/pages.php?pg=firmware_download o Qlogic HCAs: - QHT7140 QLogic InfiniPath SDR HTX HCA - QLE7140 QLogic InfiniPath SDR PCIe HCA - QLE7240 QLogic InfiniPath DDR x8 PCIe HCA - QLE7280 QLogic IniniPath DDR x16 PCIe HCA o IBM HCAs: - GX Dual-port SDR 4x IB HCA - GX Dual-port SDR 12x IB HCA - GX Dual-port DDR 4x IB HCA - GX Dual-port DDR 12x IB HCA o Chelsio RNICs: - S310/S320 10GbE Storage Accelerators - R310/R320 10GbE iWARP Adapters o Intel RNICs: - NE020 10Gb iWARP Adapter 1.4 Switches Supported ---------------------- This release was tested with switches and gateways provided by the following companies: - Voltaire - Qlogic - Flextronics - Sun - Mellanox 1.5 Third Party Packages ------------------------ The following third party packages have been tested with OFED 1.5: - Intel MPI, Version 3.2.2 - Intel MPI, Version 4.0 beta 1.6 OFED Sources ---------------- All sources are located under git://git.openfabrics.org/ Kernel sources: git://git.openfabrics.org/ofed_1_5/linux-2.6.git ofed_kernel User level Sources are downloaded from http://www.openfabrics.org/downloads/ as written in the BUILD_ID The kernel sources are based on Linux 2.6.30 mainline kernel. Its patches are included in the OFED sources directory. For details see HOWTO.build_ofed. =============================================================================== 2. Main Changes from OFED 1.4.2 =============================================================================== Note: For details regarding the various changes, please see the release notes for each package in the docs directory. 2.1 General changes o Kernel code based on 2.6.30 o libraries location - all userspace libraries can be downloaded from http://www.openfabrics.org/downloads/ See BUILD_ID for exact location o Qlogic replaced low level driver from ipath to qib. 2.2 SDP o Performance improvements o Zero copy in beta level 2.3 uDAPL o New UCM provider (ofa-v2-mlx4_0-1u) with IB UD based CM per process. More scalable then rdma_cm (cma) or socket cm (scm). o Common code base with WinOF 2.1. o Bug fixes. 2.4 perftest o Renamed tests: ib_rdma_bw -> rdma_bw ib_rdma_lat -> rdma_lat 2.5 Management o OpenSM - Mesh Analysis for LASH routing algorithm. - Reloadable OpenSM configuration (preliminary implemented) - Routing paths sorted balancing (for UpDown and MinHops) - Weighted Lid Matrices calculation (for UpDown, MinHop and DOR). - I/O nodes connectivity (for FatTree). o Diagnostic tools: 2.6 MPI: a. OSU MVAPICH 1.2.0 b. Open MPI 1.4 c. OSU MVAPICH2 1.4 d. MPI tests 3.2 2.7 iSER: o Available only on kernel.org 2.6.30, 2.6.31 and 2.6.32 2.8 NFS-RDMA o Added support for RHEL5.4, SLES10 SP3, kernel.org 2.6.25 and 2.6.30. kernels 2.6.26 and 2.6.27 are not supported o NFS-RDMA is in beta level. Will be GA in OFED-1.5.1 =============================================================================== 3. Known Issues =============================================================================== The following is a list of general limitations and known issues of the various components of the OFED 1.5 release. 1. When upgrading from an earlier OFED version, the installation script does not stop the earlier OFED version prior to uninstalling it. Workaround: Stop the old OFED stack (/etc/init.d/openibd stop) before upgrading to OFED 1.5. 2. Memory registration by the user is limited according to administrator setting. See "Pinning (Locking) User Memory Pages" in OFED_tips.txt for system configuration. 3. Fork support from kernel 2.6.12 and above is available provided that applications do not use threads. The fork() is supported as long as the parent process does not run before the child exits or calls exec(). The former can be achieved by calling wait(childpid), and the latter can be achieved by application specific means. The Posix system() call is supported. 4. The qib driver is supported only on 64-bit platforms. 5. When installing OFED on OpenSuse or Ubuntu one should use the --without-depcheck option of the install.pl script 6. IPoIB: brctl utilities do not work on IPoIB interfaces. The reason for that is that these utilities support devices of type Ethernet only. 7. "openibd stop" can sometime fail with the error: Unloading ib_cm [FAILED] ERROR: Module ib_cm is in use by ib_ipoib Workaround: run "openibd stop" again. 8. When working with ISCSI over IPoIB or mlx4_en, you must disable LRO (even if IPoIB is set to connected mode). This is because there is a bug in older kernels which causes a kernel panic. 9. On SLES11 in case that uninstall is failing, need to look at the error log and remove the RPMs manually using 'rpm -e ' 10. On SLES11 one should set allow_unsupported_modules parameter to 1 in file: /etc/modprobe.d/unsupported-modules. Without this the modules will not load. 11. iSER is supported on kernel.org: 2.6.30, 2.6.31 and 2.6.32 only OFED-1.5 will not install iSER on other kernels and original iSER module coming with Linux Distribution will stop working because of mismatch in symbols version. Note: See the release notes of each component for additional issues.