What can I help you with?
NVIDIA ConnectX-6 InfiniBand/Ethernet Adapter Cards User Manual

Linux Driver Installation

This section describes how to install and test the MLNX_OFED for Linux package on a single server with a NVIDIA ConnectX-6 adapter card installed.

Requirements

Description

Platforms

A server platform with a ConnectX-6 InfiniBand/Ethernet adapter card installed.

Required Disk Space for Installation

1GB

Operating System

Linux operating system.

For the list of supported operating system distributions and kernels, please refer to the MLNX_OFED Release Notes

Installer Privileges

The installation requires administrator (root) privileges on the target machine.

  1. Verify that the system has a NVIDIA network adapter installed by running lscpi command. The below table provides output examples per ConnectX-6 card configuration.

    ConnectX-6 Card Configuration

    Single-port Socket Direct Card (2x PCIe x16)

    Copy
    Copied!
                

    [root@mftqa-009 ~]# lspci |grep mellanox -i a3:00.0 Infiniband controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908 Family [ConnectX-6] e3:00.0 Infiniband controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908 Family [ConnectX-6]

    Dual-port Socket Direct Card (2x PCIe x16)

    Copy
    Copied!
                

    [root@mftqa-009 ~]# lspci |grep mellanox -i 05:00.0 Infiniband controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908A0 Family [ConnectX-6] 05:00.1 Infiniband controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908A0 Family [ConnectX-6] 82:00.0 Infiniband controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908A0 Family [ConnectX-6] 82:00.1 Infiniband controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908A0 Family [ConnectX-6]

    In the output example above, the first two rows indicate that one card is installed in a PCI slot with PCI Bus address 05 (hexadecimal), PCI Device number 00 and PCI Function number 0 and 1. The other card is installed in a PCI slot with PCI Bus address 82 (hexadecimal), PCI Device number 00 and PCI Function number 0 and 1.Since the two PCIe cards are installed in two PCIe slots, each card gets a unique PCI Bus and Device number. Each of the PCIe x16 busses sees two network ports; in effect, the two physical ports of the ConnectX-6 Socket Direct adapter are viewed as four net devices by the system.

    Single-port PCIe x16 Card

    Copy
    Copied!
                

    [root@mftqa-009 ~]# lspci |grep mellanox -ia 3:00.0 Infiniband controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908 Family [ConnectX-6]

    Dual-port PCIe x16 Card

    Copy
    Copied!
                

    [root@mftqa-009 ~]# lspci |grep mellanox -ia 86:00.0 Network controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908A0 Family [ConnectX-6] 86:00.1 Network controller: Mellanox Technologies MT28908A0 Family [ConnectX-6]

    For Linux driver installation, please refer to NVIDIA DOCA Installation Guide for Linux.

© Copyright 2025, NVIDIA. Last updated on Mar 13, 2025.