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Firmware Upgrade Procedures

This guide presents the firmware upgrade procedures to upgrade firmware from the Rabbit using tools present in the operating system.

PCIe Switch Firmware Upgrade

In order to upgrade the firmware on the PCIe switch, the switchtec kernel driver and utility of the same name must be installed. Rabbit hardware consists of two PCIe switches, which can be managed by devices typically located at /dev/switchtec0 and /dev/switchtec1.

Danger

Upgrading the switch firmware will cause the switch to reset. Prototype Rabbit units not supporting hotplug should undergo a power-cycle to ensure switch initialization following firmware uprade. Similarily, compute nodes not supporting hotplug may lose connectivity after firmware upgrade and should also be power-cycled.

IMAGE=$1 # Provide the path to the firmware image file
SWITCHES=("/dev/switchtec0" "/dev/switchtec1")
for SWITCH in "${SWITCHES[@]}"; do switchtec fw-update "$SWITCH" "$IMAGE" --yes; done

NVMe Drive Firmware Upgrade

In order to upgrade the firmware on NVMe drives attached to Rabbit, the switchtec and switchtec-nvme executables must be installed. All firmware downloads to drives are sent to the physical function of the drive which is accessible only using the switchtec-nvme executable.

Batch Method

Download and Commit New Firmware

The nvme.sh helper script applies the same command to each physical device fabric ID in the system. It provides a convenient way to upgrade the firmware on all drives in the system. Please see fw-download and fw-commit for details about the individual commands.

# Download firmware to all drives
./nvme.sh cmd fw-download --fw=</path/to/nvme.fw>

# Commit the new firmware
# action=3: The image is requested to be activated immediately
./nvme.sh cmd fw-commit --action=3

Rebind the PCIe Connections

In order to use the drives at this point, they must be unbound and bound to the PCIe fabric to reset device connections. The bind.sh helper script performs these two actions. Its use is illustrated below.

# Unbind all drives from the Rabbit to disconnect the PCIe connection to the drives
./bind.sh unbind

# Bind all drives to the Rabbit to reconnect the PCIe bus
./bind.sh bind

# At this point, your drives should be running the new firmware.
# Verify the firmware...
./nvme.sh cmd id-ctrl | grep -E "^fr "

Individual Drive Method

Determine Physical Device Fabric ID

The first step is to determine a drive's unique Physical Device Fabric Identifier (PDFID). The following code fragment demonstrates one way to list the physcial device fabric ids of all the NVMe drives in the system.

#!/bin/bash

SWITCHES=("/dev/switchtec0" "/dev/switchtec1")
for SWITCH in "${SWITCHES[@]}";
do
    mapfile -t PDFIDS < <(sudo switchtec fabric gfms-dump "${SWITCH}" | grep "Function 0 " -A1 | grep PDFID | awk '{print $2}')
    for INDEX in "${!PDFIDS[@]}";
    do
        echo "${PDFIDS[$INDEX]}@$SWITCH"
    done
done

# Produces a list like this:
0x1300@/dev/switchtec0
0x1600@/dev/switchtec0
0x1700@/dev/switchtec0
0x1400@/dev/switchtec0
0x1800@/dev/switchtec0
0x1900@/dev/switchtec0
0x1500@/dev/switchtec0
0x1a00@/dev/switchtec0
0x4100@/dev/switchtec1
0x3c00@/dev/switchtec1
0x4000@/dev/switchtec1
0x3e00@/dev/switchtec1
0x4200@/dev/switchtec1
0x3b00@/dev/switchtec1
0x3d00@/dev/switchtec1
0x3f00@/dev/switchtec1

Download Firmware

Using the physical device fabric identifier, the following commands update the firmware for specified drive.

# Download firmware to the drive
sudo switchtec-nvme fw-download <PhysicalDeviceFabricID> --fw=</path/to/nvme.fw>

# Activate the new firmware
# action=3: The image is requested to be activated immediately without reset.
sudo switchtec-nvme fw-commit --action=3

Rebind PCIe Connection

Once the firmware has been downloaded and committed, the PCIe connection from the Rabbit to the drive must be unbound and rebound. Please see bind.sh for details.