Installation Guide

Hardware Requirements

M-VIA 1.0 supports the following network interface cards (NICs):

DEC DC21x4x (Tulip) based Fast Ethernet cards.
Intel Pro/100 Fast Ethernet cards.
Packet Engines GNIC-I (Yellowfin) Gigabit Ethernet cards.
Packet Engines GNIC-II (Hamachi) Gigabit Ethernet cards.

If you do not have one of the NICs listed above, you can use the the M-VIA loopback device within a single node.

Kernel Requirements

You must be running a 2.2.X kernel. (for X > 1)
This release of M-VIA was tested with kernel versions 2.2.5 and 2.2.12. A 2.2.12 or newer kernel is recommended.
The driver for the network card you will use with M-VIA should not be compiled in to the kernel.
The standard network card driver must either be compiled as a module (in which case M-VIA will replace it) or not compiled at all.
Consider turning off SMP support when running on a uniprocessor.
SMP support is turned on by default in 2.2 kernels. SMP support somewhat degrades network performance (a couple of microseconds) so you may want to turn if off. Do this by setting "Symmetric multi-processing support" to "n" under the "Processor type and features" configuration section when configuring your kernel.

Installation

1. Get mvia-X.XX.tar.gz from http://www.nersc.gov/research/FTG/via

2. Unpack the M-VIA distribution.

 gunzip -c mvia-X.XX.tar.gz | tar xvf - 
 cd mvia-X.XX

3. Edit Makefile.config.
This file is self-documenting. Normally the only variables you will need to set are the kernel version number and whether to compile for a SMP or single-processor machine.
4. Build and install the M-VIA modules and user level library:
```
 make install 
```
Modules are placed by default in /lib/modules/<kernel-version-number>/net. Note that by default modules for all supported devices are installed. The modules are:
- via_ka: the M-VIA kernel agent
- via_lo: the M-VIA loopback device
- via_ering: the M-VIA etherring device class. Used by M-VIA ethernet devices (3c59x, hamachi, yellowfin, eepro100 and tulip)
- via_3c59x: the (not yet fully working) M-VIA 3c59x device (replaces the 3c59x module)
- via_eepro100: the M-VIA eepro100 device (replaces the eepro100 module)
- via_hamachi: the M-VIA PacketEngines GNIC-II device (replaces the hamachi module)
- via_tulip: the M-VIA tulip device (replaces the tulip module)
- via_yellowfin: the M-VIA PacketEngines GNIC-I device (replaces the yellowfin module)
The VIPL library is placed in /usr/local/lib/libvipl.a and the VIPL include file in /usr/local/include/vipl.h.
5. Update module dependencies:
```
 depmod -a <kernel-version-number> 
```
This ensures the kernel module loader knows about the dependencies among the new modules.
6. Create /dev entries for M-VIA devices.
M-VIA associates network devices with entries in /dev. By default, these are via_lo (via loopback), via_eth0, via_eth1, etc.:
```
 make devices 
```
7. Add the following line to /etc/conf.modules to enable automatic loading of the M-VIA loopback module:
```
 alias char-major-60 via_lo 
```
If you changed the MVIA_CHAR_MAJOR option in Makefile.config, replace the 60 in the above line with the appropriate major device number.
8. For each NIC you wish to use for VIA communication, add an entry to /etc/conf.modules in the following format:
```
 alias <dev> <via_module> 
```
where dev is the name of the Linux device, e.g. eth0, and via_module is either via_eepro100, via_hamachi, via_tulip or via_yellowfin.
9. Remove conflicting /etc/conf.modules entries.
The M-VIA device modules are backward compatible with the corresponding Linux modules, however, they can not be loaded simultaneously. Remove or comment out any entries in conf.modules which share the same suffix as an M-VIA device module, e.g. the M-VIA via_tulip and standard Linux tulip module may not be loaded simultaneously.
10. Enable the M-VIA network devices in your system startup files.
The method used to configure network interfaces is Linux distribution specific. On a Red Hat system create the appropriate ifcfg-devX files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts.
11. Copy examples/etc/vip_hosts to /etc/vip_hosts and edit for your network.

Module Dependencies

If you want to load the kernel modules manually, then ignore steps 7 through 9, above. If you wish to load modules using insmod, you should be aware of the following dependencies:

All the M-VIA modules require the kernel agent, via_ka.
All the M-VIA ethernet drivers require the etherring class module, via_ering.

Thus, to use just the M-VIA loopback device you would run, from the modules directory:

 insmod via_ka.o
 insmod via_lo.o

To use the M-VIA eepro100 driver you would run, from the modules directory:

 insmod via_ka.o
 insmod via_ering.o
 insmod via_eepro100.o

If you use modprobe to load modules, then these dependencies are handled automatically.

M-VIA 1.0. Fri, 17 Sep 1999 09:13:43 -0700.
Copyright (C) 1998,1999 Berkeley Lab.