[ofw] [PATCH 1/4] docs/install: document an installation method

[Fab Tillier]

Sean Hefty wrote on Wed, 4 Nov 2009 at 22:46:10

>+Note: The HCA drivers automatically install the ibbus, winverbs, and
>+winmad packages.  Separate installations of those packages are not
>+necessary.

One thing worth noting is that if you already have the InfiniBand HCA class registered (from a previous WinOF driver install, for example) and that version of the drivers did not include all the upper filters, the class registration will *not* be updated, and you will not have all the filters installed.  I've had this issue when upgrading from a version of the drivers that didn't include winverbs to one that did, and expected winverbs to work post-upgrade.

You can add upper filters using devcon (from the WDK), or you can edit the registry for the InfiniBand HCA class (under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\<IB class GUID>.  Note that neither of the previous two steps should be attempted by end-users, unless you know exactly what you're doing.

Oh, and lastly, it may be useful to have a means of rebooting the cluster into safe mode to recover things if the driver update caused a distributed BSOD...  On a big enough cluster, you're probably better off starting over with compute node deployment, in which case all you need is the ability to power cycle (which the systems may be doing if they're stuck in a BSOD loop.)

-Fab