[ofa-general] Bare minimum install

[Roland Dreier]

 > a) What OFED packages are absolutely necessary for my MPI applications
 > (i.e. LS-DYNA) to use IB using MVAPICH2 or OpenMPI?

None, with Ubuntu 8.04.  Just install the openmpi-bin package.

 > b) Will installing the Infiniband software on an NFS mount decrease
 > its usefulness? (assuming IPoIB is not setup) Would it be best to
 > install the Infiniband software on the local drive of each node?

Either way is fine.

 > c) What OFED packages are necessary to setup IPoIB? For a small
 > cluster (16 nodes), is IPoIB even worth the trouble?

None.  Just modprobe ib_ipoib and ifconfig your ibX interfaces however
you want.

 > d) Is there a document that describes, in simple terms, how Infiniband
 > works so that I know why I'm installing certain packages and how to
 > manually configure the system? (Automated install doesn't work with
 > Ubuntu)

Not really, unfortunately.

 - R.