ixgbe devlink support

This document describes the devlink features implemented by the ixgbe device driver.

Info versions

Any of the versions dealing with the security presented by devlink-info is purely informational. Devlink does not use a secure channel to communicate with the device.

The ixgbe driver reports the following versions

devlink info versions implemented

Name	Type	Example	Description
board.id	fixed	H49289-000	The Product Board Assembly (PBA) identifier of the board.
fw.undi	running	1.1937.0	Version of the Option ROM containing the UEFI driver. The version is reported in major.minor.patch format. The major version is incremented whenever a major breaking change occurs, or when the minor version would overflow. The minor version is incremented for non-breaking changes and reset to 1 when the major version is incremented. The patch version is normally 0 but is incremented when a fix is delivered as a patch against an older base Option ROM.
fw.undi.srev	running	4	Number indicating the security revision of the Option ROM.
fw.bundle_id	running	0x80000d0d	Unique identifier of the firmware image file that was loaded onto the device. Also referred to as the EETRACK identifier of the NVM.
fw.mgmt.api	running	1.5.1	3-digit version number (major.minor.patch) of the API exported over the AdminQ by the management firmware. Used by the driver to identify what commands are supported. Historical versions of the kernel only displayed a 2-digit version number (major.minor).
fw.mgmt.build	running	0x305d955f	Unique identifier of the source for the management firmware.
fw.mgmt.srev	running	3	Number indicating the security revision of the firmware.
fw.psid.api	running	0.80	Version defining the format of the flash contents.
fw.netlist	running	1.1.2000-6.7.0	The version of the netlist module. This module defines the device’s Ethernet capabilities and default settings, and is used by the management firmware as part of managing link and device connectivity.
fw.netlist.build	running	0xee16ced7	The first 4 bytes of the hash of the netlist module contents.

Flash Update

The ixgbe driver implements support for flash update using the devlink-flash interface. It supports updating the device flash using a combined flash image that contains the fw.mgmt, fw.undi, and fw.netlist components.

List of supported overwrite modes

Bits	Behavior
DEVLINK_FLASH_OVERWRITE_SETTINGS	Do not preserve settings stored in the flash components being updated. This includes overwriting the port configuration that determines the number of physical functions the device will initialize with.
DEVLINK_FLASH_OVERWRITE_SETTINGS and DEVLINK_FLASH_OVERWRITE_IDENTIFIERS	Do not preserve either settings or identifiers. Overwrite everything in the flash with the contents from the provided image, without performing any preservation. This includes overwriting device identifying fields such as the MAC address, Vital product Data (VPD) area, and device serial number. It is expected that this combination be used with an image customized for the specific device.

Reload

The ixgbe driver supports activating new firmware after a flash update using DEVLINK_CMD_RELOAD with the DEVLINK_RELOAD_ACTION_FW_ACTIVATE action.

$ devlink dev reload pci/0000:01:00.0 reload action fw_activate

The new firmware is activated by issuing a device specific Embedded Management Processor reset which requests the device to reset and reload the EMP firmware image.

The driver does not currently support reloading the driver via DEVLINK_RELOAD_ACTION_DRIVER_REINIT.

Regions

The ixgbe driver implements the following regions for accessing internal device data.

regions implemented

Name	Description
nvm-flash	The contents of the entire flash chip, sometimes referred to as the device’s Non Volatile Memory.
shadow-ram	The contents of the Shadow RAM, which is loaded from the beginning of the flash. Although the contents are primarily from the flash, this area also contains data generated during device boot which is not stored in flash.
device-caps	The contents of the device firmware’s capabilities buffer. Useful to determine the current state and configuration of the device.

Both the nvm-flash and shadow-ram regions can be accessed without a snapshot. The device-caps region requires a snapshot as the contents are sent by firmware and can’t be split into separate reads.

Users can request an immediate capture of a snapshot for all three regions via the DEVLINK_CMD_REGION_NEW command.

$ devlink region show
pci/0000:01:00.0/nvm-flash: size 10485760 snapshot [] max 1
pci/0000:01:00.0/device-caps: size 4096 snapshot [] max 10

$ devlink region new pci/0000:01:00.0/nvm-flash snapshot 1

$ devlink region dump pci/0000:01:00.0/nvm-flash snapshot 1
0000000000000000 0014 95dc 0014 9514 0035 1670 0034 db30
0000000000000010 0000 0000 ffff ff04 0029 8c00 0028 8cc8
0000000000000020 0016 0bb8 0016 1720 0000 0000 c00f 3ffc
0000000000000030 bada cce5 bada cce5 bada cce5 bada cce5

$ devlink region read pci/0000:01:00.0/nvm-flash snapshot 1 address 0 length 16
0000000000000000 0014 95dc 0014 9514 0035 1670 0034 db30

$ devlink region delete pci/0000:01:00.0/device-caps snapshot 1