i40e Linux* Base Driver for the Intel(R) Ethernet Controller 700 Series =============================================================================== September 28, 2018 Copyright(c) 2014-2018 Intel Corporation. Contents ======== - Important Notes - Overview - Identifying Your Adapter - Building and Installation - Command Line Parameters - Intel(R) Ethernet Flow Director - Additional Features & Configurations - Known Issues ================================================================================ Important Notes --------------- TC0 must be enabled when setting up DCB on a switch --------------------------------------------------- The kernel assumes that TC0 is available, and will disable Priority Flow Control (PFC) on the device if TC0 is not available. To fix this, ensure TC0 is enabled when setting up DCB on your switch. Enabling a VF link if the port is disconnected ---------------------------------------------- If the physical function (PF) link is down, you can force link up (from the host PF) on any virtual functions (VF) bound to the PF. Note that this requires kernel support (Redhat kernel 3.10.0-327 or newer, upstream kernel 3.11.0 or newer, and associated iproute2 user space support). If the following command does not work, it may not be supported by your system. The following command forces link up on VF 0 bound to PF eth0: ip link set eth0 vf 0 state enable Do not unload port driver if VF with active VM is bound to it ------------------------------------------------------------- Do not unload a port's driver if a Virtual Function (VF) with an active Virtual Machine (VM) is bound to it. Doing so will cause the port to appear to hang. Once the VM shuts down, or otherwise releases the VF, the command will complete. Configuring SR-IOV for improved network security ------------------------------------------------ In a virtualized environment, on Intel(R) Ethernet Server Adapters that support SR-IOV, the virtual function (VF) may be subject to malicious behavior. Software-generated layer two frames, like IEEE 802.3x (link flow control), IEEE 802.1Qbb (priority based flow-control), and others of this type, are not expected and can throttle traffic between the host and the virtual switch, reducing performance. To resolve this issue, configure all SR-IOV enabled ports for VLAN tagging. This configuration allows unexpected, and potentially malicious, frames to be dropped. Overview -------- This driver supports kernel versions 2.6.32 and newer. Driver information can be obtained using ethtool, lspci, and ifconfig. Instructions on updating ethtool can be found in the section Additional Configurations later in this document. This driver is only supported as a loadable module at this time. Intel is not supplying patches against the kernel source to allow for static linking of the drivers. For questions related to hardware requirements, refer to the documentation supplied with your Intel adapter. All hardware requirements listed apply to use with Linux. Adapter teaming is implemented using the native Linux Channel bonding module. This is included in supported Linux kernels. Channel Bonding documentation can be found in the Linux kernel source: /documentation/networking/bonding.txt This driver supports XDP (Express Data Path) on kernel 4.14 and later. Note that XDP is blocked for frame sizes larger than 3KB. The driver information previously displayed in the /proc file system is not supported in this release. NOTE: 1 Gb devices based on the Intel(R) Ethernet Network Connection X722 do not support the following features: * Data Center Bridging (DCB) * QOS * VMQ * SR-IOV * Task Encapsulation offload (VXLAN, NVGRE) * Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) * Auto-media detect Identifying Your Adapter ------------------------ The driver in this release is compatible with devices based on the following: * Intel(R) Ethernet Controller X710 * Intel(R) Ethernet Controller XL710 * Intel(R) Ethernet Network Connection X722 * Intel(R) Ethernet Controller XXV710 For the best performance, make sure the latest NVM/FW is installed on your device and that you are using the newest drivers. For information on how to identify your adapter, and for the latest NVM/FW images and Intel network drivers, refer to the Intel Support website: http://www.intel.com/support SFP+ and QSFP+ Devices: ----------------------- For information about supported media, refer to this document: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/release-notes/xl710- ethernet-controller-feature-matrix.pdf NOTE: Some adapters based on the Intel(R) Ethernet Controller 700 Series only support Intel Ethernet Optics modules. On these adapters, other modules are not supported and will not function. NOTE: For connections based on Intel(R) Ethernet Controller 700 Series, support is dependent on your system board. Please see your vendor for details. NOTE:In all cases Intel recommends using Intel Ethernet Optics; other modules may function but are not validated by Intel. Contact Intel for supported media types. NOTE: In systems that do not have adequate airflow to cool the adapter and optical modules, you must use high temperature optical modules. ================================================================================ Building and Installation ------------------------- To build a binary RPM* package of this driver, run 'rpmbuild -tb i40e-.tar.gz', where is the version number for the driver tar file. Note: For the build to work properly, the currently running kernel MUST match the version and configuration of the installed kernel sources. If you have just recompiled the kernel reboot the system before building. Note: RPM functionality has only been tested in Red Hat distributions. _lbank_line_ 1. Move the base driver tar file to the directory of your choice. For example, use '/home/username/i40e' or '/usr/local/src/i40e'. 2. Untar/unzip the archive, where is the version number for the driver tar file: tar zxf i40e-.tar.gz 3. Change to the driver src directory, where is the version number for the driver tar: cd i40e-/src/ 4. Compile the driver module: # make install The binary will be installed as: /lib/modules//updates/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/i40e/i40e.ko The install location listed above is the default location. This may differ for various Linux distributions. NOTE: To compile the driver on some kernel/arch combinations, a package with the development version of libelf (e.g. libelf-dev, libelf-devel, elfutilsl-libelf-devel) may need to be installed. NOTE: To gather and display additional statistics, use the I40E_ADD_PROBES pre-processor macro: #make CFLAGS_EXTRA=-DI40E_ADD_PROBES Please note that this additional statistics gathering can impact performance. 5. Load the module using the modprobe command: modprobe [parameter=port1_value,port2_value] Make sure that any older i40e drivers are removed from the kernel before loading the new module: rmmod i40e; modprobe i40e 6. Assign an IP address to the interface by entering the following, where ethX is the interface name that was shown in dmesg after modprobe: ip address add / dev ethX 7. Verify that the interface works. Enter the following, where IP_address is the IP address for another machine on the same subnet as the interface that is being tested: ping Note: For certain distributions like (but not limited to) RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 and Ubuntu, once the driver is installed the initrd/initramfs file may need to be updated to prevent the OS loading old versions of the i40e driver. The dracut utility may be used on RedHat distributions: # dracut --force For Ubuntu: # update-initramfs -u ================================================================================ Command Line Parameters ----------------------- In general, ethtool and other OS specific commands are used to configure user changeable parameters after the driver is loaded. The i40e driver only supports the max_vfs kernel parameter on older kernels that do not have the standard sysfs interface. The only other module parameter supported is the debug parameter that can control the default logging verbosity of the driver. If the driver is built as a module, the following optional parameters are used by entering them on the command line with the modprobe command using this syntax: modprobe i40e [