Erich Focht
In order to make updating VEOS easy, the VEOS RPMs normally packaged in a zip file at https://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/hpc/aurora/ve-software/ have been extracted and made available as a set of repositories. If your aurora machine can connect to the internet, here’s a procedure to use these VEOS repositories.
This post does not explain the procedure for upgrading the distribution, eg. from CentOS 7.4 to CentOS 7.5. When doing such an upgrade in an environment with Infiniband, the Mellanox OFED package (MOFED) must be deinstalled before the upgrade and re-installed (usually at different version) after the upgrade.
PREPARATION
Make sure you have the public GPG key for VE software imported:
rpm --import https://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/hpc/aurora/ve-software/files/vesw.public.key
Another key used for signing VEOS-related RPMs should already be on the system as part of the TSUBASA-soft-release-1.0-1.noarch RPM at /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-TSUBASA-soft. Make sure that key is imported as well:
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-TSUBASA-soft
Replace your yum repository configurations for VEOS (mostly local repository possibly called /etc/yum.repos.d/TSUBASA-local.repo) by following two repository configuration files:
/etc/yum.repos.d/veos-common.repo:
[veos-common]
name=Aurora VEOS Common
baseurl=https://sx-aurora.com/repos/veos/common
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
/etc/yum.repos.d/veos-rhel7.repo:
[veos-rhel7]
name=Aurora VEOS RHEL Specific
#baseurl=https://sx-aurora.com/repos/veos/RHEL7.3
baseurl=https://sx-aurora.com/repos/veos/RHEL7.4
#baseurl=https://sx-aurora.com/repos/veos/RHEL7.5
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
In the later repo config comment/uncomment the baseurl that corresponds to your variant of RHEL7 or CentOS7.
UPDATING
The steps described below are following the Installation Manual.
Take the VE cards into maintenance mode
/opt/nec/ve/bin/vecmd state set off
/opt/nec/ve/bin/vecmd state set mnt
Stop VEOS, Monitoring and MMM
systemctl stop vemmd
/opt/nec/ve/veos/sbin/terminate-all-veos
systemctl stop mmm
rmmod ve_drv
rmmod vp
Update VEOS
yum update
Update VMC Firmware
If the vmcfw package was updated it is recommended to update the VMC firmware of the VE card. The VE’s FW version can be checked with the command:
/opt/nec/ve/bin/vecmd info | grep VMCFW
If the version differs from the version of the vmcfw RPM, the VE’s FW should be updated while the cards are in maintenance mode and the VEOS related services are still stopped. The procedure is simple, but make sure the updating command is issued from within the directory containing the firmware:
cd /etc/opt/nec/ve/mmm/vmc
/opt/nec/ve/bin/vecmd fwup vmc aurora_MK10.bin
Reboot the VH after a FW upgrade.
Bring VE cards back online
If Infiniband for SX-Aurora TSUBASA is installed on the system:
systemctl start vemmd
Then load the VE driver kernel module and start MMM:
modprobe ve_drv
systemctl start mmm
Or reboot the system.