Release notes for rhel-7.5beta

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Posting here because the releasenotes directed feedback here.

I downloaded the 7.5beta to see what the state of OPA (Omnipath) support was. Looking at the driver (hfi1.ko) it seems it has seen significant update from 7.4 but there's no mention of it in the "udpated network drivers" section of the release notes.

Maybe this is because the DRIVER_VERSION for that .ko isn't updated correctly? (big diffstat but exactly the same version string...).

PK
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Responses

LS Red Hat Community Member 50 points
26 March 2018 7:29 AM

Hello Peter, Thank you for your questions.

Intel® Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) host software has been fully supported since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 and this has not changed, it will be fully supported with RHEL 7.5.

As for the driver versions, we list drivers that have an upgraded version. I'll check with Intel.

Note that you can use the rhel-notes@redhat.com mailing list for your feedback related to RHEL Release Notes.

Regards, Lenka

PK Community Member 55 points
26 March 2018 11:21 AM

Thank you for answering.

I did know of the official "fully supported" status but I am a bit confused about the specifics. In the 7.5beta there seems to be a mix of version wrt various components of the Omnipath support...

opa_fm and similar "toolsl" packages: 10.5 (vs latest from Intel-IFS 10.6) libpsm/libfabric: newer version than latest from intel-IFS 10.6 kernel driver: No idea. Many parts seem about as up to date as 10.6 from Intel-IFS, but it's very different..

Maybe you can try to find some clarification on this for us. We're also interested to know who (if anyone) does testing on this combination of components? Presumably Intel tests IFS (currently 10.6).

LS Red Hat Community Member 50 points
26 March 2018 11:28 AM

Hi Peter, I have forwarded your further question to an Intel contact person. I hope to get an answer soon.

LS Red Hat Community Member 50 points
29 March 2018 9:05 AM

Hi Peter, I got this response from Intel: "The upstream kernel made us remove the driver version, so we stopped updating it. It is possible the Red Hat kernel has a “stale” version in it. We are fully supported in RHEL 7.5."

Please let me know if you need any more information.

PK Community Member 55 points
29 March 2018 1:58 PM

That was unfortunately not a very helpful response.

Upstream kernel still has "#define HFI1_DRIVER_VERSION_BASE "0.9-294" so it was not removed. This string will be reported as the driver version (if you for example do "modinfo hfi1" and show the same on every different driver...).

The central question is still: What is the driver shipped with 7.5? It is clearly NOT the driver of the lastest intel package (ifs-10.6). It is not even close... Some form of versioning and/or changelog is needed.

We would like more information on who selects, maintains and tests opa* packages + psm2/libfabric + hfi1 driver in RHEL-7.5. Given that the versions are significantly different from "official" intel ifs-10.6 (both older(opa_fm), newer(psm2) and unknown(driver)) it's hard to accept without more information.

If this is Intel, why do the versions not match the ifs set?

If this is Redhat, how does Redhat select and test this combination? Why so different?

Akemi Yagi's picture Guru 2404 points
29 March 2018 3:36 PM

The RHEL kernel has a version number but the mainline kernel does not seem to have one.

$ modinfo hfi1 | grep version
version:        0.9-294
rhelversion:    7.4
srcversion:     9120CA99A98601A5F0E024A
vermagic:       3.10.0-693.21.1.el7.x86_64 SMP mod_unload modversions

$ modinfo 4.15.13-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64/kernel/drivers/infiniband/hw/hfi1/hfi1.ko | grep version
srcversion:     DC2CA1F0A3930A2F49A3010
vermagic:       4.15.13-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64 SMP mod_unload modversions
PK Community Member 55 points
10 April 2018 5:19 PM

Hi Akemi,

You may or may not remember me from CentOS/IRC (cap_)..

That module version is as I've said misleading (it's the same regardless of actual module..). It's actually still in Linux upstream too:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/infiniband/hw/hfi1/common.h#L206

We would really like to know what the actual driver version is (and its compatibility with libpsm+libfabric and its features/changes).

How does the driver in 7.5 differ from the 7.4 one? How do the Redhat drivers differ from the Intel provided ones (IFS)?

Since they are very much not the same, who tests the Redhat ones?

PK Community Member 55 points
23 April 2018 11:12 AM

Something of a summary for the archives:

OPA related content for the RHEL release notes was discussed in this bugzilla ticket: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1543995

And this document contains the detailed contribution from Intel for 7.5: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/network-and-i-o/fabric-products/Intel_OP_Software_RHEL_7_5_RN_J98644.pdf

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