Re: [Testbed-admins] NetFPGA Instructions

[Harley S Green <Harley.S.Green@aero.org>]

I have them installed in existing pc
nodes and downloaded the image to customize, but I would appreciate any
pointers on how to set them up in the database.

Thanks,
Harley Green
Network Systems Department
The Aerospace Corporation
(310) 336-0772

Robert P Ricci <ricci@cs.utah.edu>
Sent by: testbed-admins-bounces@flux.utah.edu

05/26/2009 04:34 PM

To	testbed-admins@flux.utah.edu
cc
Subject	[Testbed-admins] [dkotz@cs.utexas.edu: NetFPGA in our testbed?]

We recently had a discussion on the testbed-ops list
about getting
NetFPGAs running in another Emulab instance. I've excerpted what I think
are the most generally-relevant messages below for the benefit of
others...

-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------
| Robert P Ricci <ricci@cs.utah.edu> | <ricci@flux.utah.edu>
| Research Associate, University of Utah Flux Group
| www.flux.utah.edu | www.emulab.net
\-----------------------------------------------------------

----- Message from "David A. Kotz" <dkotz@cs.utexas.edu>
on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:30:37 -0600 -----

To:	testbed-ops@emulab.net
Subject:	NetFPGA in our testbed?

I did some searching, and it looked like the docs
online were how to 
allocate NetFPGAs in the Utah emulab.  I have a new researcher who
wants 
to add some nodes to our testbed with NetFPGAs either in addition to, or
preferably, in place of the NICs for the experimental network.  Is
that 
going to be scary and/or improbable?  We'd probably buy Dell r200s,
assuming the cards fit in them.

- dave

----- Message from "David M. Johnson" <johnsond@flux.utah.edu>
on Mon, 9 Feb 2009 10:52:52 -0700 -----

To:	"David A. Kotz" <dkotz@cs.utexas.edu>
cc:	testbed-ops@emulab.net
Subject:	Re: NetFPGA in our testbed?

On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 11:30:37AM -0600, David A.
Kotz wrote:
> I did some searching, and it looked like the docs online were how
to 
> allocate NetFPGAs in the Utah emulab.  I have a new researcher
who wants 

Yes, the docs are for Utah -- we're the only emulab with netfpgas as of
yet,
far as I know.  The support for them is not Utah-specific.

> to add some nodes to our testbed with NetFPGAs either in addition
to, or 
> preferably, in place of the NICs for the experimental network.  Is
that 
> going to be scary and/or improbable?  We'd probably buy Dell
r200s, 
> assuming the cards fit in them.

You need to make sure to buy the stanford-recommended PC to host
them... otherwise you are likely to run into weird hardware problems that
may
be unsolvable.  This is still the Dell 2950 line, I believe, but you'll
want to
check.  Also, you can only connect them to Gb switch ports last I
knew, since
the default software MAC gateware supported only Gb ethernet, I believe.
 The
PHYs should be 10/100/1000.

> - dave

----- Message from "David M. Johnson" <johnsond@flux.utah.edu>
on Mon, 9 Feb 2009 11:31:31 -0700 -----

To:	"David A. Kotz" <dkotz@cs.utexas.edu>
cc:	testbed-ops@emulab.net
Subject:	Re: NetFPGA in our testbed?

On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 12:06:44PM -0600, David A.
Kotz wrote:
> How difficult is the emulab part of it?  Is it tough to get the
MFS to 
> work with it?  Any other gotchas?

The netfpga is just an add-in PCI card to a regular PC, so as long as the
MFS
can boot on that regular PC, there should be no trouble -- the MFS doesn't
do
anything to the netfpga.

There should be no gotchas; just let us know when you plan to add them
and I'll
help you get them into your DB appropriately.  You'll probably want
to grab our
FC6-NETFPGA image and customize it for your site at that time.

----- Message from "David A. Kotz" <dkotz@cs.utexas.edu>
on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:08:34 -0600 -----

To:	"David M. Johnson" <johnsond@flux.utah.edu>
cc:	testbed-ops@emulab.net
Subject:	Re: NetFPGA in our testbed?

David M. Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 04:48:35PM -0600, David A. Kotz wrote:
>>> help you get them into your DB appropriately.  You'll
probably want to 
>>> grab our
>>> FC6-NETFPGA image and customize it for your site at that time.
>> It looks like they support the PE2950 and also a variety of Asus
>> microATX boards for do-it-yourself boxes.  I'll probably
at least give 
>> it a shot in the Dell r200 I'm testing now, which by the way,
seems to 
>> get along just fine with our testbed setup, in case you haven't
tried 
>> any there in Utah.
>>
>> Do you have an emulabized CentOS image, or did you make the NetFPGA
>> software work on an unsupported OS?
> 
> Nope, we don't do CentOS... I just did a few hacks to get things working
on
> Fedora Core 6 -- I think it was just some little perl and makefile
nits.
> It works just fine on Fedora, which is quite similar to CentOS anyway.


We have a NetFPGA in an r200, and I'm ready to grab an image to try on
it.  Should I start an experiment on Utah's emulab and grab it from
there, or are the images available for direct download?  I also need
to 
grab a 64bit OS image for our regular PE1950 machines.

- dave

----- Message from "David M. Johnson" <johnsond@flux.utah.edu>
on Tue, 3 Mar 2009 16:42:31 -0700 -----

To:	"David A. Kotz" <dkotz@cs.utexas.edu>
cc:	testbed-ops@emulab.net
Subject:	Re: NetFPGA in our testbed?

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 05:08:34PM -0600, David A.
Kotz wrote:
> We have a NetFPGA in an r200, and I'm ready to grab an image to try
on 
> it.  Should I start an experiment on Utah's emulab and grab it
from 
> there, or are the images available for direct download?  I also
need to 
> grab a 64bit OS image for our regular PE1950 machines.

You can grab http://www.emulab.net/downloads/FC6-NETFPGA.ndz and
http://www.emulab.net/downloads/FEDORA8-64-STD.ndz , which are both utah
images
that have not been "generic-ized".

----- Message from "David A. Kotz" <dkotz@cs.utexas.edu>
on Mon, 11 May 2009 15:41:51 -0500 -----

To:	"David M. Johnson" <johnsond@flux.utah.edu>
cc:	testbed-ops@emulab.net
Subject:	Re: NetFPGA in our testbed?

David M. Johnson wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 05:08:34PM -0600, David A. Kotz wrote:
>> We have a NetFPGA in an r200, and I'm ready to grab an image to
try on 
>> it.  Should I start an experiment on Utah's emulab and grab
it from 
>> there, or are the images available for direct download?  I
also need to 
>> grab a 64bit OS image for our regular PE1950 machines.
> 
> You can grab http://www.emulab.net/downloads/FC6-NETFPGA.ndz and
> http://www.emulab.net/downloads/FEDORA8-64-STD.ndz , which are both
utah images
> that have not been "generic-ized".


David,

To resurrect yet again this old and discontinuous conversation, the FC6
image doesn't work on our r200.  I think maybe it's missing support
for 
the SATA disk or something because it fails to mount root and panics. 
Rather than messing with building a new FC6 kernel or whatever was 
necessary to make it work, I decided to try installing the NetFPGA 
software on our FC8 image, which I know works on that machine.  As
you 
can probably guess, I'm running into some trouble with package name 
issues between CentOS and Fedora, and before trying to re-invent the 
wheel entirely, I thought I'd ask for pointers on getting NetFPGA 
working on Fedora, and also to make sure you weren't avoiding FC8 in 
favor of FC6 for a reason.

- dave
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