Installing and Setting Up the Driver

C H A P T E R 2

This chapter explains how to download and install the nxge driver. The nxge Gigabit Ethernet driver (nxge(7D)) is a multi-threaded, loadable, clonable, GLD-based STREAMS driver. The nxge driver is managed by the dladm(1M) command line utility, which allows VLANs to be defined on top of nxge instances and for nxge instances to be aggregated. See the dladm(1M) man page for more details on configuring the data-link interfaces and link aggregations.

This chapter contains the following sections:

Downloading and Installing the Driver on a Solaris SPARC or x86 Platform

Downloading and Installing the Driver on a Solaris SPARC or x86 Platform

If your system uses the Solaris SPARC or x86 operating system you will need to download and install the nxge device driver for Solaris platforms.

To Download the Driver on a Solaris Platform

1. Locate and download the nxge device driver software at the following web site:

http://www.sun.com/products/networking/ethernet/index.html

2. Uncompress the gzipped tar file:

# gunzip nxge.tar.gz

3. Unpack the tar file:

# tar xvf nxge.tar

a. For SPARC systems, change to the following directory:

# cd 10_GigabitEthernet/Solaris_10/sparc/Packages

b. For x86 systems:

# cd 10_GigabitEthernet/Solaris_10/i386/Packages

4. For SPARC systems, determine which architecture your system is running:

# uname -m

a. For sun4v systems, install the software packages by typing the following at the command line:

# /usr/sbin/pkgadd -d SUNWnxge.v SUNWnxgem

b. For sun4u systems, install the software packages by typing the following at the command line:

# /usr/sbin/pkgadd -d SUNWnxge.u SUNWnxgem

5. For x86 systems, install the software packages by typing the following at the command line:

# /usr/sbin/pkgadd -d

A menu similar to the following displays:

The following packages are available:
 
  1  SUNWnxge.u     Sun x8 10G/1G Ethernet Adapter Driver
                    (sparc.sun4u) 1.0,REV=2007.01.12.10.0
  2  SUNWnxge.v     Sun x8 10G/1G Ethernet Adapter Driver
                    (sparc.sun4v) 1.0,REV=2007.01.12.10.0
  3  SUNWnxgem      Sun x8 10G/1G Ethernet Adapter Driver Man Pages
                    (all) 1.0,REV=2007.01.12.10.0
Select package(s) you wish to process (or ’all’ to process
all packages). (default: all) [?,??,q]:

6. Select the packages you want to install:

Press Return or type all to accept the default and install all packages.

Type the specific numbers, separated by a space, if you prefer not to install any optional packages.

7. Verify that the nxge driver is installed on the system:

Sun x8 10G Ethernet Adapter Driver(sparc.sun4v) 1.0,REV=2007.01.06.10.0
Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
## Executing checkinstall script.
Using </> as the package base directory.
## Processing package information.
## Processing system information.
   8 package pathnames are already properly installed.
## Verifying package dependencies.
## Verifying disk space requirements.
## Checking for conflicts with packages already installed.
## Checking for setuid/setgid programs.
  
This package contains scripts which will be executed with super-user
permission during the process of installing this package.
  
Do you want to continue with the installation of <SUNWnxge> [y,n,?] y
  
Installing Sun x8 10G Ethernet Adapter Driver as <SUNWnxge>
  
## Installing part 1 of 1.
/platform/sun4v/kernel/drv/sparcv9/nxge
[ verifying class <none> ]
[ verifying class <preserve> ]
## Executing postinstall script.
  
Installation of <SUNWnxge> was successful.

To Remove the Driver From a Solaris SPARC Platform

1. Determine the driver packages:

# pkginfo | grep SUNWnxge
system      SUNWnxge       Sun x8 10G Ethernet Adapter Driver

2. Remove the driver packages:

# pkgrm SUNWnxge plus any other packages from the previous command

Downloading and Installing the Driver on a Linux Platform

1. Login to your system.

2. Download the driver RPM for your operating system:

http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=44eb1efd

For example:

nxge-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm

3. Discover the network interfaces before adding the package by using the ifconfig -a command:

# ifconfig -a |grep eth
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:20:F1:DC
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:20:F1:DD
eth2      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:20:F1:DE
eth3      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:20:F1:DF

4. Use the rpm tool to install the driver on SuSe and RedHat Linux.

# rpm -ivh /tmp/RHEL4U4-large/RPMS/x86_64/nxge-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm
Preparing...             ###########################################
1:nxge                   ###########################################

Note - In RHEL5.0 and later releases, the driver is packaged in the kmod driver binary package format. This packaging allows forward and backward driver binary compatibility within the same flavors of RHEL5 releases. Driver packages nxge version 2.0.0 and later are not compatible with the earlier nxge-1.x-x releases. To upgrade from 1.x-x to 2.x.x rpm package, it is necessary to remove nxge-1.x-x package before installing the 2.x.x package.

The RHEL5 nxge 2.x.x kmod package contains two separate packages: One for the driver and another one for applications like nxge_config. You must install both of the following packages:

kmod-nxge-rhel-2.0-1.x86_64.rpm   (driver binary package)
nxge-apps-rhel-2.0-1.x86_64.rpm (application package)

To install the complete package, enter the following:

# rpm -ivh nxge-apps-rhel-2.0-1.x86_64.rpm kmod-nxge-rhel-2.0-1.x86_64.rpm

To ensure that the driver is loaded after the rpm installation, enter the following:

# modprobe nxge

5. Verify the new network interface instances corresponding to the Sun Quad GbE UTP x8 PCIe ExpressModule:

# ifconfig -a |grep eth
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:20:F1:DC
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:20:F1:DD
eth2      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:20:F1:DE
eth3      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:20:F1:DF
eth4      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:6C:78:E8 
eth5      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:4F:6C:78:E9

The Sun Quad GbE UTP x8 PCIe ExpressModule instances, eth4 and eth5, are shown in bold italics.

6. Add the nxge interfaces to the /etc/modules.conf file to automatically load the driver after system reboot:

alias eth4 nxge
alias eth5 nxge

7. Use the ethtool command to check the parameter configurations that apply to the nxge driver.

(For 10G)
# ethtool -i eth4
driver: nxge
version: 2.0.1
firmware-version:  2XGF PXE1.47 FCode 3.9 07/04/24
bus-info: 0000:84:00.0
 
(Equivalent for 1G)
# ethtool -i eth4
driver: nxge
version: 2.0.1
firmware-version: QGC PXE1.47 FCode 3.9 07/04/24
bus-info: 0000:02:00.2

To Remove the Driver From a Linux Platform

To remove the driver packages from a Linux Platform use the rpm -e command:

# rpm -e nxge-1.0-1