question of mellanox secure firmware

[Freebsd1976]

Today have a mellanox cx555a which have a HPE secure firmware (flint -q show secure fw), want flash to mellanox firmware , but flint refuses to flash even with —allows-psid-change.
Then I shorted FNP jumpers use paper clip , flash the mellanox firmware successfully, but after remove paper clip , the card not shown in system, mst status show there are nothing in system ,change pcie slot or even change pc , the card still not shown, I think the card is dead .
But luckily, I reflash HPE firmware use paper clip again then the card shown again .

so my question is how to flash normal mellanox firmware when secure firmware on the card ?

 

[Jab.R]

Bump -- any way to reflash HPE to stock Mellanox MCX555a

What I want to do is use this card with Ethernet

 

[Domih]

Go to: https://www.mellanox.com/page/management_tools.
Click on Archive Versions and select 4.0.0. This version is "new" enough to work on most cards and is "old" enough to still have –allow_psid_change effective(*). Caveats:
1) If your PC already has the Mellanox software installed, uninstall it before trying to install MFT 4.0.0. The best is to do so on a separate PC if have one so that you do not waste time to uninstall and reinstall each time you buy a new card.
2) I know for a fact it works for Connect-X2, Connect-X3 from HP, Oracle and so on bought on eBay. I always used Linux for the flashing. Never tried on Windows.
3) I do NOT know if it works with 100Gbe cards.
4) If you flash the WRONG firmware, the card will be bricked. You then have to paper-clip + re-flash the brand firmware to get it back.
5) You're on your own! No warranties.

(*) How did I find out? I just went backward trying the MFT versions until –allow_psid_change was still working.

 

[Jab.R]

Thanks, unfortunately, mft 4.0.0 doesn't recognize my card MCX555a on Ubuntu 18.04. I'd need to downgrade the OS to 17 ... and then might still not work

It looks like these HPE cards are designed ONLY to work on HPE and configured with the custom HPE UEFI bios, and they use the secure fw "feature" to lock this down i.e. I can't switch the card from IB to ETH using the Mellanox utilities.

 

[Domih]

Looks like support for Connect-X5 was added starting MFT 4.6.0 according to the release notes. You might try it. Note: I did not test all versions going backward. I was jumping by 2 or 3 versions.

 

[nasbdh9]

I think HPE has customized the PCB or checked some VPD information
HPE OEM products starting with mellanox connectx-4 series cannot be updated to mellanox stock firmware and vice versa

 

[i386]

 

[Freebsd1976]

View attachment 13633

Wow , question is how to , tried quite a few method , none can works