Upgrading of Broadcom Drivers to resolve eth0 NIC SerDES Link is Down

If the post Encountering eth0 NIC SerDES Link is Down did not resolve your issue and you are still encountering "eth0 NIC SerDES Link" issues, do upgrade the Broadcom Drivers from your vendor site and it will eliminate your issue immediately. Since my vendor is IBM, so I downloaded the Broadcom BNX2 Drivers
Broadcom BNX2 driver version bnx2-2.0.23b for RHEL 5 - IBM System x and BladeCenter

If you are not sure what is your version of drivers, you can do a

# ethtool -i eth0

The version 2.0.8 and above should resolve the above issue

Oh yes, if you are using IBM Products and the above drivers from IBM, after unpacking the drivers from IBM and ensuring you have the necessary prerequistics, just do a

If you are using the Free Clone of Redhat which includes CentOS or Scientific Linux, you may want to temporarily modify the /etc/redhat-release information to simulate a real RHEL Distribution. Vendor patches often requires RHEL distribution

#CentOS release 5.4 (Final)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 5

# mkdir brcm
# cd brcm
# tar -zxvf brcm_dd_nic_netxtreme2-2.0.23b_1.62.15_rhel5_32-64.tgz
# ./install.pl --update 

 INSTALL_OPTIONS --yes --update


        Drivers will be installed/migrated to 2.6.18-164 version

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Checking kmod-brcm-netxtreme2-6.2.23-1.x86_64.rpm
WARNING: Non Whitelist symbol detected
----------------------------------------------------------------------
kmod-brcm-netxtreme2-6.2.23-1.x86_64.rpm installed successfully
SUCCESS

Encountering State Initializing after installing Voltaire Drivers

First thing first,

For more information on downloading the appropriate Voltaire Drivers, see blog entry Download Voltaire OFED Drivers for CentOS. After you have downloaded the appropriate and install Voltaire Drivers, you may encounter something like:

CA 'mlx4_0'
        CA type: MT26428
        Number of ports: 1
        Firmware version: 2.6.0
        Hardware version: a0
        Node GUID: 0x0008f1476328oaf0
        System image GUID: 0x0008fd6478a5af3
        Port 1:
                State: Initializing
                Physical state: LinkUp
                Rate: 40
                Base lid: 2
                LMC: 0
                SM lid: 14
                Capability mask: 0x0251086a
                Port GUID: 0x0008f103467a5af1

It is due to the Subnet Manager (opensm) not being installed. Voltaire OFED Installation package installed only the OpenIB Packages. Even if you have install the opensm before installing the Voltaire OFED Package, the Voltaire OFED Package will uninstall the existing opensm packages to ensure openib packages are fully compatible.

To install the Opensm packages nicely, do read on the blog entry Installing Voltaire QDR Infiniband Drivers for CentOS 5.4

Other good reasing materials:

1. RHEL and Infiniband - basic diagnostics

Installing Voltaire QDR Infiniband Drivers for CentOS 5.4

This blog writeup Installing Voltaire QDR Infiniband Drivers for CentOS 5.4 (linuxcluster.wordpress.com) is on how you can

1. Download the drivers from the Voltaire Website
2. Install the Infiniband Drivers
3. Install the Subnet Manager - opensmd
4. Test the State is "Active"
5. Connectivity Test between Server and Client

For more information, on Voltaire Infiniband installation, do read on

1. Voltaire OFED 1.5 User Manual
2. Infiniband HOWTO by Guy Coates

Download Voltaire OFED Drivers for CentOS

Here is the FTP site for downloading Voltaire OFED Drivers Listing. The latest drivers for CentOS is for CentOS 5.4
http://www.voltaire.com/ftp/versions/current/Software/Server_Products/VoltaireOFED-Linux/1.5/

Uninstalling Nouveau driver and Installing NVIDIA Drivers on Fedora 13

I was trying to install the proprietary NVIDIA Driver for my workstation with Fedora 13, but was unable to install due to the presence of Nouveau Driver which Fedora installed by default and this installation by Fedora caused a conflict with the intended installation of NVIDIA Driver

Source for this information is derived from a Forum http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/fedora-35/fedora-12-nouveau-nvidia-driver-solution-771248/

Step 1: Blacklist Nouveau Driver

# vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Add the below line to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist nouveau

Step 2: Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add the following to the end of the kernel line

rdblacklist=nouveau vga=31B

Replace 31B with the desired mode:
1600x1200 - 346
1280x1024 - 31B
1400x1050 - 348
1024x768 - 318
800x600 - 315

For example:

......
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.34.6-54.fc13.i686 ro 
root=/dev/mapper/vg_kittycool-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_kittycool/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_kittycool/lv_swap 
rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM 
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 
KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet rdblacklist=nouveau vga=31B
......

Step 3: Download and Install NVIDIA Drivers

# chmod 755 NVIDIA......run

# ./NVIDIA......run

# reboot

Chelsio iWARP Installation and Setup Guide for CentOS 5.4

Most of this material for this blog entry is taken the documentation Guide named Chelsio iWARP installation and setup guide (pdf) . The Blog Entry ”Chelsio iWARP Installation and Setup Guide for CentOS 5.4” (Linux Cluster) is an modification from a user’s perspective of the original document from Chelsio.