ixgbe devlink support

This document describes the devlink features implemented by the ixgbe device driver.

Info versions

Any of the versions dealing with the security presented by devlink-info is purely informational. Devlink does not use a secure channel to communicate with the device.

The ixgbe driver reports the following versions

devlink info versions implemented

Name	Type	Example	Description
board.id	fixed	H49289-000	The Product Board Assembly (PBA) identifier of the board.
fw.undi	running	1.1937.0	Version of the Option ROM containing the UEFI driver. The version is reported in major.minor.patch format. The major version is incremented whenever a major breaking change occurs, or when the minor version would overflow. The minor version is incremented for non-breaking changes and reset to 1 when the major version is incremented. The patch version is normally 0 but is incremented when a fix is delivered as a patch against an older base Option ROM.
fw.undi.srev	running	4	Number indicating the security revision of the Option ROM.
fw.bundle_id	running	0x80000d0d	Unique identifier of the firmware image file that was loaded onto the device. Also referred to as the EETRACK identifier of the NVM.
fw.mgmt.api	running	1.5.1	3-digit version number (major.minor.patch) of the API exported over the AdminQ by the management firmware. Used by the driver to identify what commands are supported. Historical versions of the kernel only displayed a 2-digit version number (major.minor).
fw.mgmt.build	running	0x305d955f	Unique identifier of the source for the management firmware.
fw.mgmt.srev	running	3	Number indicating the security revision of the firmware.
fw.psid.api	running	0.80	Version defining the format of the flash contents.
fw.netlist	running	1.1.2000-6.7.0	The version of the netlist module. This module defines the device’s Ethernet capabilities and default settings, and is used by the management firmware as part of managing link and device connectivity.
fw.netlist.build	running	0xee16ced7	The first 4 bytes of the hash of the netlist module contents.

Flash Update

The ixgbe driver implements support for flash update using the devlink-flash interface. It supports updating the device flash using a combined flash image that contains the fw.mgmt, fw.undi, and fw.netlist components.

List of supported overwrite modes

Bits	Behavior
DEVLINK_FLASH_OVERWRITE_SETTINGS	Do not preserve settings stored in the flash components being updated. This includes overwriting the port configuration that determines the number of physical functions the device will initialize with.
DEVLINK_FLASH_OVERWRITE_SETTINGS and DEVLINK_FLASH_OVERWRITE_IDENTIFIERS	Do not preserve either settings or identifiers. Overwrite everything in the flash with the contents from the provided image, without performing any preservation. This includes overwriting device identifying fields such as the MAC address, Vital product Data (VPD) area, and device serial number. It is expected that this combination be used with an image customized for the specific device.

Reload

The ixgbe driver supports activating new firmware after a flash update using DEVLINK_CMD_RELOAD with the DEVLINK_RELOAD_ACTION_FW_ACTIVATE action.

$ devlink dev reload pci/0000:01:00.0 reload action fw_activate

The new firmware is activated by issuing a device specific Embedded Management Processor reset which requests the device to reset and reload the EMP firmware image.

The driver does not currently support reloading the driver via DEVLINK_RELOAD_ACTION_DRIVER_REINIT.