Crossflash Oracle CX556A to Mellanox OEM?

[Stephan]

The point is to have modules loadable cleanly, for any kernel you might run, because they are properly compiled just for it and are not precompiled for some older Centos or Debian kernel, which you have to exactly hit. As can be seen in your post #16, you seem to have this problem at least. Also all MFT tools will be available from /usr/bin without resorting to /opt. To build and install, just do

cd (change into your user home)
mkdir tmp
cd tmp
wget https://seitics.de/files/mft/PKGBUILD
makepkg -Ccfi
(-i will also install, needs root password)

Then do
mst start (this will load the kernel modules)
mst status

I cross-flashed four CX3 from EMC to Mellanox recently using the package on Arch. Not saying using a "supported" Linux version is any better or worse, provided it works. If you can't get it to work, I'm just giving you another option.

 

[jpmomo]

Thanks for the info and detailed steps. I will give it a try and update this thread so that others might benefit. You gotta luv STH!

 

[jpmomo]

I think I may be running into issues with centos 8 vs centos 8 stream but not sure.

I tried to follow your steps above but got stuck at the " makepkg -Ccfi " my system couldn't find the makepkg command.

I then tried to install makepkg and also tried to install pacman but neither were found. It is probably a basic linux command/concept that I am missing.
Thanks again for any tips,
jp

 

[Stephan]

$ pacman -Qo /usr/bin/makepkg
/usr/bin/makepkg is owned by pacman 6.0.1-5

You need to install Arch Linux for real, not dabble with Centos. Maybe you have an old SSD laying around.

 

[jpmomo]

Will install another distro. In the meantime, is there much difference between your method and running the install.sh from mellanox? It looks like the install script from mellanox will also use the specific kernel modules.

 

[Stephan]

I never looked at Mellanox' install.sh, because it is of no use on Arch. I saw they did not even bother to natively port their package from RPM to DEB, just used "alien" for Debian. This can go well and not so well.

So I wrote my own package and made sure it integrates cleanly and works. I also made sure to dynamically build the two kernel modules required, for whatever kernels that are currently installed. If "mst start" does not load kernel modules, you have that kernel module problem.