Installing Popular Linux Distributions on BlueField
Users wishing to build their own customized NVIDIA® BlueField® OS image can use the BFB build environment. See this GitHub webpage for more information.
For any customized BlueField OS image to boot on the UEFI secure-boot-enabled DPU (default DPU secure boot setting), the OS must be either signed with an existing key in the UEFI DB (e.g., the Microsoft key), or UEFI secure boot must be disabled. See "Secure Boot" and its subpages for more details.
Contact NVIDIA Enterprise Support for information on the installation of Linux distributions other than Ubuntu.
The following table lists the BlueField drivers which are part of the Official Ubuntu Linux distribution for BlueField. Some of the drivers are not in the upstream Linux kernel yet.
|
Driver |
Description |
BlueField-2 |
BlueField-3 |
|
bluefield-edac |
BlueField-specific EDAC driver |
✓ |
✗ |
|
dw_mmc_bluefield |
BlueField DW Multimedia Card driver |
✓ |
✓ |
|
sdhci-of-dwcmshc |
SDHCI platform driver for Synopsys DWC MSHC |
✓ |
✓ |
|
gpio-mlxbf2 |
GPIO driver |
✓ |
✗ |
|
gpio-mlxbf3 |
GPIO driver |
✗ |
✓ |
|
i2c-mlx |
I2C bus driver (i2c-mlxbf.c upstream) |
✓ |
✗ |
|
ipmb-dev-int |
Driver needed to receive IPMB messages from a BMC and send a response back. This driver works with the I2C driver and a user-space program such as OpenIPMI. |
✓ |
✗ |
|
ipmb-host |
Driver needed on the DPU to send IPMB messages to the BMC on the IPMB bus. This driver works with the I2C driver. It only loads successfully if it executes a successful handshake with the BMC. |
✓ |
✗ |
|
mlxbf-gige |
Gigabit Ethernet driver |
✓ |
✓ |
|
mlxbf-livefish |
BlueField HCA firmware burning driver. This driver supports burning firmware for the embedded HCA in the BlueField SoC. |
✓ |
✗ |
|
mlxbf-pka |
BlueField PKA kernel module |
✓ |
✓ |
|
mlxbf-pmc |
Performance monitoring counters. The driver provides access to available performance modules through the sysfs interface. The performance modules in BlueField are present in several hardware blocks and each block has a certain set of supported events. |
✓ |
✗ |
|
mlxbf-ptm |
Kernel driver that provides a debufgs interface for the system software to monitor the BlueField device's power and thermal management parameters. |
✗ |
✓ |
|
mlxbf-tmfifo |
TMFIFO driver for BlueField SoC |
✓ |
✓ |
|
mlx-bootctl |
Boot control driver. This driver provides a sysfs interface for systems management software to manage reset time actions. |
✓ |
✓ |
|
mlx-trio |
TRIO driver for BlueField SoC |
✓ |
✗ |
|
pwr-mlxbf |
Supports reset or low-power mode handling for BlueField. |
✓ |
✓ |
|
pinctrl-mlxbf |
Allows multiplexing individual GPIOs to switch from the default hardware mode to software-controlled mode. |
✗ |
✓ |
|
mlxbf-pmc |
Mellanox PMC driver |
✗ |
✓ |