Changes and New Feature History

General

Added support for device booting with FlexBoot on legacy mode when using BlueField-3 external on Enhanced NIC mode.

Adapter Cards

Added support for NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU devices at GA level.

FlexBoot UI

Added a new setting "Boot Legacy Interrupt" in the NIC Configuration menu used to enable/disable interrupt support for boot legacy mode.

For further information, refer to the PreBoot User Manual.

Added a new setting "Dhcp Client-Id HW Type IB" in the NIC Configuration menu used to enable/disable sending DHCP client-id option (61) with IB Type + GUID instead full prefix + GUID.

For further information, refer to the PreBoot User Manual.

Added a new setting "DHCP HW Type IB" in the NIC Configuration menu user to enable/disable sending DHCP IB discover packets with HW Type IB and HW address GUID instead MAC.

For further information, refer to the PreBoot User Manual.

Link Speed/InfiniBand

Updated the Flexboot driver to boot with the highest link speed on InfiniBand mode (instead of configuring it to SDR) on devices that operate on Multi-Host mode and on devices that operate with keep_link_up enabled.

General

Updated firmware versions. For the firmware versions supported see, Compatible Products.

General

Updated firmware versions.

FlexBoot UI

Added support for exposing the NDR link speed in the Ctrl +B menu.

FlexBoot UI

Added a new setting to enable/disable RT_PPS_ENABLED_ONPOWERUP.

For further information, refer to the PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

General

Added support for NVIDIA® ConnectX®-7 adapter cards.

ConnectX-7 has the same feature set as ConnectX-6 adapter card. For the list of the ConnectX-6 firmware features, please see ConnectX-6 Firmware Release Notes.

FlexBoot UI

Added support for "Cross-Signed CA URI" and "Trust CA fingerprint" new settings for NIC Configuration.

For further information, refer to the PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

iSCSI Authentication

Added support for setting the iSCSI authentication settings via IPXE script (not only via Flexboot UI).

FlexBoot UI

Added support for "RDMA NIC mode" new setting to the Flexboot menu.

For further information, refer to the PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

NVIDIA® BlueField®

Added support for boot over Virtio Net emulation hotplug/static device in legacy boot environment .

For further information, refer to the NVIDIA BlueField User Manual.

VirtioNet/VirtioBlk Exprom

Added support for Enabling/Disabling UEFI X86 VirtioNet/VirtioBlk Exprom in Flexboot using the Ctrl+B menu.

Adapter Cards

Added support for BlueField 2 adapters cards at GA level.

iSCSI

Added support for iSCSI boot over IPv6.

FlexBoot UI

Added new settings for IPv6 in iSCSI Initiator/General section in Ctrl B menu.

For further information refer to the PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

FlexBoot UI

Added "Permit Total Shutdown" new setting to the FlexBoot boot menu.

For further information refer to the PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

FlexBoot UI

Added "Flow Control" new setting to the FlexBoot boot menu.

For further information refer to the PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

HTTPS

Added support for HTTPS protocol by default. Flexboot now will contain only a single trusted root certificate (the “iPXE root CA” certificate). To use a standard SSL certificate issued by a public CA (such as Verisign), iPXE must be able to download a cross-signed certificate to complete the chain of trust up to the “iPXE root CA” certificate. These cross-signed certificates are downloaded automatically when needed from http://ca.ipxe.org/auto.

For more info please see full description on https://ipxe.org/crypto and https://ipxe.org/cfg/crosscert

Bug Fixes

Bug Fixes

General

This version of FlexBoot does not have any changes. The version was increased due to the release of a new firmware version.

Adapter Cards

Added support for ConnectX-6 Lx adapter cards.

Adapter Cards

[Beta] Added support for BlueField 2 adapters cards.

FlexBoot UI

Exposed the following settings for both IB/ETH mode :

• Mac Address

• Virtual Mac Address

• Port Guid Address

• Node Guid Address

• Virtual Node Guid Address

For further information refer to PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

Adapter Cards

Added support for ConnectX-6 Dx adapter cards.

FlexBoot Legacy Interrupt

Added the ability to enable/disable the received indication using the Legacy Interrupt option.

For further information refer to MFT User Manual.

FlexBoot UI

Added Virtual Node GUID settings to FlexBoot menu and removed Virtual Port GUID setting.

For further information refer to PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

FlexBoot UI

Added Port GUID, Node GUID and Virtual Port GUID new settings to the FlexBoot boot menu for devices that operate in IB mode.

For further information refer to PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

FlexBoot UI

Added "SNAPI Operation" new setting to the FlexBoot boot menu.

For further information refer to PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

FlexBoot UI

Added NIC Partitions Configuration settings in Flexboot boot menu for devices that operate in Socket-Direct mode . For further information please refer to FlexBoot and UEFI User Manual.

Adapter Cards

Added support for ConnectX-6 ready adapter cards. For further information, contact Mellanox Support.

Enable/Disable UEFI X86, UEFI ARM Exprom using Ctrl+B

Added support to Enable/Disable UEFI X86, UEFI Arm Exprom in FlexBoot using the Ctrl+B menu.

FlexBoot UI

Added “PXE boot without fail-over to iSCSI” and “iSCSI boot without fail-over to PXE boot” options for legacy_boot_prtocol configuration.

For further information, refer to Mellanox PreBoot Drivers User Manual.

Enabled PXE to expose the current link speed of the system when in ETH mode.

Enable/Disable FlexBoot in EXPROM via mlxconfig

Added PXE support to additional ConnectX-4/ConnectX-4 Lx/ConnectX- 5 adapter cards.

Note: Not all cards are compiled with FlexBoot. For the full list of the OPNs compiled with FlexBoot, please refer to the firmware Release Notes

Enabling/Disabling FlexBoot in ConnectX-4/ConnectX-4 Lx/ConnectX-5 in EXPROM is done via mlxconfig.

The default value is:

• FLEXBOOT enable

Note: The value above can be set only in adapter cards that support this capability.

For further information on how to enable/disable UEFI, refer to section Enabling/Disabling FlexBoot/UEFI in EXPROM via mlxconfig in the Mellanox PreBoot Drivers (FlexBoot & UEFI) User Manual.

VLAN Priority

Set the default VLAN priority to 0.

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)

LACP support is disabled by default. It can be enabled via mlxconfig.

PXE Boot

Added ESC option as an abort key during PXE boot process.

FlexBoot Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)

Added the ability to enable/disable FlexBoot LACP via mlxconfig.

Serial Console

Removed Serial Console support in the ConnectX-4 Lx adapter card.

Upstream sync

Synced the source with iPXE (upstream sync)

Promiscuous VLAN mode

Added support for promiscuous VLAN mode.

MTU

[InfiniBand] Added support for configurable MTU.

Expansion ROM version

Enabled expansion ROM ( exp_rom ) version exposition according to the new specification (e.g. expose ARCH in flint tool).

FlexBoot UI

Added a FlexBoot menu support for NV_POWER_CONF . Now power consumption configuration is supported from the FlexBoot menu.

Enhanced FlexBoot/firmware debug capability using Flexboot UI. Added the reg_dump option to the panic_behavior configuration in the FlexBoot menu

Upstream sync

Synced the source with iPXE (upstream sync)

Networking

Ethernet only: The MTU value is set to 1500 upon driver’s bring up.

FlexBoot UI

Added support for "Undi network wait timeout"

Enhanced FlexBoot/firmware debug capability using Flexboot UI

Performance

Performance enhancements in Ethernet mode

Upstream sync

Synced the source with iPXE (upstream sync)

iSCSI re-imaging

Enables the user to install a new image on active ISCSI target

FlexBoot UI

Added new configuration for network link type for supported cards

(ConnectX-4 VPI cards)

Enabled boot configuration menu in ConnectX-4 when the physical port is IB

Booting

Enabled booting with non-default Pkey in ConnectX-4 when the physical port is IB

Link Status

Removed link status line printout at boot time

Boot Menu

Changed the Bus:Device:Function format in boot menu, from PCIBus:Dev.Func to 0000:Bus:Dev.Func

Upstream sync

Synced the source with iPXE (upstream sync)

FlexBoot UI

Added debug prints option in the FlexBoot boot menu. For further information, please refer to FlexBoot and UEFI User Manual.

Upstream sync

Synced the source with iPXE (upstream sync)

System Diagnosis

Added the ability to diagnose problems in released ROMs by enabling the debug log levels for specific modules.

Note: This ability should be used only when debug session is needed.

Interrupts

Added support for ConnectX-4/ConnectX-4 Lx interrupts

IPv6

Added IPv6 support

x64 Architecture

Added x64 architecture support in ConnectX-4 and Connect-IB adapter cards

SHELL CLI

Removed support for the following SHELL CLI commands:

• Non-volatile option storage commands

• SAN boot commands

• Menu commands

• Login command

• Sync command

• DNS resolving command

• Time commands

• Image crypto digest commands

• Loopback testing commands

• VLAN commands

• PXE commands

• Reboot command

For further information, please refer to: http://ipxe.org/cmd

Upstream sync

Synced the source with iPXE (upstream sync)

Image size

Added support for .mrom images larger than 128kB

Adapter Cards

Added support for ConnectX-4 EN and ConnectX-4 Lx EN

Flat real mode

Moved to flat real mode when calling INT 1a,b101 to avoid BIOSes issues

Spanning Tree Protocol

Added support for detecting Spanning Tree Protocol non-forwarding ports (RSTP/MSTP)

Upstream sync

Synced the source with iPXE (upstream sync)