This is an internal USB connection which provides RShim connectivity between the BMC and BlueField.
Provides Network Connection from BMC to BlueField DPU
By default, the BMC and BlueField interfaces are configured as follows:
BMC | BlueField | |
---|---|---|
Interface Name | "tmfifo_net0" | "tmfifo_net0" |
MAC Address | 00:1A:CA:FF:FF:02 | 00:1A:CA:FF:FF:01 |
IP Address | 192.168.100.1 | 192.168.100.2 |
Pushing BFB from BMC to BlueField Arm
To update the software on the BlueField Arm cores, the DPU must be booted up without mounting the eMMC flash device. This requires an external boot flow where a BFB (which includes ATF, UEFI, Linux kernel, and initramfs) is pushed from an external host via USB or PCIe. On BlueField DPUs with an integrated BMC, the USB interface is internally connected to the BMC and is enabled by default. Therefore, you must verify that the RShim driver is running on the BMC. This provides the ability to push a bootstream over the USB interface to perform an external boot.
Changing Default Credentials Using bf.cfg
DPU is ready
" message appears in /dev/rshim0/misc
).Attempting to log in before all services are up prints the following message: "Permission denied, please try again."
Alternatively, Ubuntu users can provide a unique password that will be applied at the end of the BFB installation. This password would need to be defined in a bf.cfg
configuration file. To set the password for the ubuntu user:
Create password hash. Run:
# openssl passwd -1 Password: Verifying - Password: $1$3B0RIrfX$TlHry93NFUJzg3Nya00rE1
Add the password hash in quotes to the
bf.cfg
file:# vim bf.cfg ubuntu_PASSWORD='$1$3B0RIrfX$TlHry93NFUJzg3Nya00rE1'
The
bf.cfg
file will be used with thebfb-install
script in the following step.Password policy:
- Minimum password length – 8
- At least one upper-case letter
- At least one lower-case letter
- At least one numerical character
Installing BFB
Disable RShim on the host. Run on the host:
systemctl stop rshim systemctl disable rshim
Enable RShim on the BMC. Run on the BMC shell:
ipmitool raw 0x32 0x6a 1
Verify that the RShim service is running and that the
/dev/rshim0
device is present.ipmitool raw 0x32 0x69
The expected output for this command is
0x01
.Normally, the BFB is first copied to the USB host and then written to the RShim device. However, since the BFB is too big to be stored on the BMC flash or tmpfs, these two steps can be combined, and the image can be written to the RShim device from the remote server directly.
scp <path_to_bfb> root@<bmc_ip>:/dev/rshim0/boot
This initiates a soft reset on the BlueField-2 and then pushes the bootstream. For Ubuntu BFBs, the eMMC is flashed automatically once the bootstream is pushed.
If
bf.cfg
is needed as part of the boot process, run:cat <path_to_bfb> bf.cfg > new.bfb scp <path to new.bfb> root@<bmc_ip>:/dev/rshim0/boot