
Issue 11
© Solarflare Communications 2014
43
Solarflare Server Adapter
User Guide
3.4 Installing Solarflare Drivers and Utilities on Linux
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Distributions...Page 43
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Distributions...Page 44
• Building the Source RPM...Page 42
Linux drivers for Solarflare are available in DKMS and source RPM packages. The source RPM can be
used to build binary RPMs for a wide selection of distributions and kernel variants. This section
details how to install the resultant binary RPM.
Solarflare recommend using DKMS RPMs if the DKMS framework is available. See
for more details.
3.5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Distributions
These instructions cover installation and configuration of the Solarflare network adapter drivers on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server. Refer to
Software Driver Support on page 12
for details of
supported Linux distributions.
Building the Source RPM on page 42
for directions on creating the binary RPM.
1
Install the RPMs:
[root@myhost1]# rpm -ivh kernel-module-sfc-RHEL6-2.6.32-
279.el6.x86_64-3.3.0.6262-1.x86_64.rpm
2
There are various tools that can be used for configuring the Solarflare Server Adapter:
a)
The NetworkManager service and associated GUI tools. For more information about his
https://wiki.gnome.org/NetworkManager
.
b)
Solarflare recommend using the Network Administration Tool (
NEAT
) to configure the new
network interface.
NEAT
is a GUI based application and therefore requires an X server to run.
c)
Alternatively the command line program
Kudzu
can be used. However, you may find when
kudzu is run that you are NOT presented with an option to configure the new network
interface. If this occurs, carefully clear details of the Solarflare Server Adapter from the
hardware database by removing all entries with “vendor id: 1924” in the
/etc/
sysconfig/hwconf
file. Running kudzu again should now provide an option to configure
the newly added network interface.
3
Apply the new network settings:
a)
NEAT
provides an option to
Activate
the new interface. The new network interface can
then be used immediately (there is no need to reboot or restart the network service).
b)
If you are not using
NEAT
you will need to reboot, or alternatively restart the networking
service, by typing the following before the new Solarflare interface can be used:
[root@myhost1]# service network restart
NOTE:
The Solarflare adapter should be physically installed in the host computer before installing
the driver. The user must have root permissions to install the adapter drivers.