Version 10.2, 24 May 2008
Abstract
These release notes are generic for all SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10 based products. Some
parts may not apply to a particular architecture/product. Where this is
not obvious, the respective architectures are listed explicitly. The
instructions for installing this Service Pack can be found in the
README file on CD1.
Any documentation (if installed) can be found
below /usr/share/doc/ in the installed system.
This Novell product includes materials licensed to Novell under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL requires that Novell make available certain source code that corresponds to those GPL-licensed materials. The source code is available for download at http://www.novell.com/linux/source. Also, for up to three years from Novell's distribution of the Novell product, upon request Novell will mail a copy of the source code. Requests should be sent by e-mail to sle_source_request@novell.com or as otherwise instructed at http://www.novell.com/linux/source. Novell may charge a fee to recover its reasonable costs of distribution.
Table of Contents
This SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 2 serves several purposes:
Provide the Infiniband software stack. Chapter 2, Infiniband software stack
Through joint testing and maximum care, we try hard not to break any ISV certification with a Service Pack, but we recommend checking with your ISV about your application's certification status.
IPoIB: IP protocol for networking via Infiniband
SRP: SCSI protocol for block storage access
iSER: iSCSI protocol for block storage access via IP
RDS: Clustered database access
SDP: Sockets based access
NFS-RDMA / Cluster FS: Access to file systems
The infiniband software stack is not available on zSeries.
The IP over infiniband interfaces (ib0, ib1,...ibN) must be configured manually. To configure the ipoib interfaces create or edit the files /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-ibN (where N is the interface number. Here is an example file.
BOOTPROTO='static'
IPADDR='192.168.0.34'
MTU=''
NETMASK='255.255.255.0'
STARTMODE='auto'
USERCONTROL='no'
_nm_name='static-0'
When the infiniband software stack is installed, the cxgb3-driver (RPM ofed-cxgb3-NIC-kmp) is always installed, even if the hardware for this driver is not present.
This is a result of the dependencies between the kernel modules.
PPC: Huge Page Memory support (16GB pages, enabled via HMC) is not yet supported under Linux. Problems occur if huge pages are assigned to a partition in combination with eHEA / eHCA adapters.
eHEA: Network interfaces can't be setup if huge page memory is assigned to the same partition.
PPC: If the ib_ehca InfiniBand driver is being loaded in port autodetection mode (module parameter nr_ports=-1), the IP-over-InfiniBand network interfaces (ibX) might become available too late, causing "ifup ibX", as issued from the openibd startup script, to fail, resulting in the ibX interface not being brought up. If this happens, a manual "rcnetwork restart" will fix the problem.
PPC: If a QP drops into Error state due to communication problems, the eHCA driver prints an error data block into dmesg and /var/log/messages. The format of this block is described in part in the IBM Redbook "Implementing InfiniBand in IBM System p" (SG247351), chapter 6.4.2 "eHCA device driver version", section "Error data block" (p.217) (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247351.html).
One of the fields within this block, the "Queue pair error word", contains bits indicating the specific situation that caused the QP to drop into Error state. These bits are explained in table 6-3 "Debug code bit definitions" (p.220) in the Redbook. On eHCA2 adapters, in rare cases, bits 46 and 47 of this QP error word might falsely report errors and should not be relied upon.
PPC: In the SLES 10 SP2 AS release, the IP MTU supported by the IBM ehca adapter depends on both the hardware version of the adapter and the ipoib mode. The ipob mode can be determined with the command: $cat /sys/class/net/ibX/mode, this will display either "datagram" or "connected". The adapter hardware version can be determined with the command /usr/bin/ibv_devinfo. The first digit of the hw_version field displayed by ibv_devinfo, represents the major hardware version and will be either a 1 or 2. The MTU can be found using the following table.
Mode V1 ehca V2 ehca
datagram 2044 2044
connected 65520 12270
Read the READMEs on the CDs.
Get the detailed changelog information about a particular package from the RPM:
rpm --changelog -qp <FILENAME>.rpm
<FILENAME>. is the name of the RPM.
Check the ChangeLog file in the top level of CD1 for
a chronological log of all changes made to the packages.
http://www.novell.com/documentation/sles10/ contains additional or updated documentation for SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10.
Visit http://www.novell.com/linux/ for the latest Linux product news from SUSE/Novell and http://www.novell.com/linux/source/ for additional information on the source code of SUSE LINUX Enterprise products.