BlueField-2 Quickstart Guide for Clemson R7525s

[Scott Groel]

The following instructions will reset the Mellanox BlueField-2 Smart-NICs installed in the Clemson R7525 type nodes to factory defaults, removing any previous configuration, and setting the password to a default.

This guide is intended to restore basic pass-through functionality to the NIC, or to reset the NIC to a default state for you to then login and configure. The guide was written assuming you have an R7525 host allocated, and provisioned to the default Ubuntu image.

1. Download rshim package from NVIDIA and install:
cd /tmp
wget https://content.mellanox.com/BlueField/RSHIM/rshim_2.0.6-3.ge329c69_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i rshim_2.0.6-3.ge329c69_amd64.deb

2. Ensure rshim is running
sudo systemctl status rshim

Expected output should show the process as "active (running)"

If not running, restart the rshim process
sudo systemctl restart rshim

3. Paste the following line into the text file "/tmp/bf.cfg"

ubuntu_PASSWORD='$1$fkQE6cZQ$KlSSiH4HDNTui53W/1hA40'

4. Download the bfb image from mellanox
wget https://content.mellanox.com/BlueField/BFBs/Ubuntu20.04/DOCA_v1.2.1_BlueField_OS_Ubuntu_20.04-5.4.0-1023-bluefield-5.5-2.1.7.0-3.8.5.12027-1.signed-aarch64.bfb

5. Install the bfb image to the BF-2 adapter
sudo bfb-install --bfb /tmp/DOCA_v1.2.1_BlueField_OS_Ubuntu_20.04-5.4.0-1023-bluefield-5.5-2.1.7.0-3.8.5.12027-1.signed-aarch64.bfb --config /tmp/bf.cfg --rshim rshim0

6. Reboot the host
sudo reboot

Optional:
7. To access the BlueField-2 adapter, first set the IP of the tmfifo_net0 interface
sudo ifconfig tmfifo_net0 192.168.100.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

8. SSH to the bluefield-2 adapter
ssh ubu...@192.168.100.2

Password: Ubuntu1!

Please see this page for more information about the NVIDIA DOCA software stack.

Thanks,
Scott