Chapter 4: Installing the Linux Drivers
66
Teaming withChannel Bonding
With the Linux drivers, you can team adapters together using the bonding
kernel module and a channel bonding interface. For more information, see
the Channel Bonding information in your operating system documentation.
Statistics Detailed statistics and configuration information can be viewed using the
ethtool utility. See the ethtool man page for more information.
Linux iSCSIOffload
This section describes how to install and run Linux iSCSI applications.
The following recommendations apply to offloading Linux iSCSI programs:
Not all Broadcom NetXtreme II adapters support iSCSI offload.
The iSCSI session will not recover after a hot remove and hot plug.
The iSCSI driver/firmware will not offload iSCSI connections onto a
jumbo frame-enabled CNIC device.
For MPIO to work properly, iSCSI nopout should be enabled on each
iSCSI session. Refer to open-iscsi documentation for procedures on
setting up noop_out_interval and noop_out_timeout values.
In the scenario where multiple CNIC devices are in the system and the
system is booted via Broadcom's iSCSI boot solution, ensure that the
iscsi node under /etc/iscsi/nodes for the boot target is bound to the NIC
that is used for booting.
See the following sections:
“Installing User Application - bnx2id” on page66
“Installing Open iSCSI User Applications” on page67
“Binding iSCSI Target to Broadcom NX2 iSCSI Transport Name” on
page 68
“Making Connections to iSCSI Targets” on page68
“Maximizing Offload iSCSI Connections” on page 69

Installing User Application - bnx2id

The bnx2id application should be installed under /sbin when bnx2i RPM
package is installed. See “Installing the Source RPM Package” on
page 52 for information. Run the bnx2id daemon before attempting to
create iSCSI connections. The driver does not establish connections to
the iSCSI target without the daemon's assistance.
bnx2id
The bnx2id daemon requires mknod and sh shell, which are standard on
any regular server. For iSCSI boot using NetXtreme II offload support,
binaries for mknod and sh need to be bundled into initrd image.