Updating ConnectX-3 Firmware

Aug 10, 2022

ConnectX-3’s are very cheap 10Gb ethernet adapters that can be had on eBay for about $30. They’ve been quite reliable except if they are running an old firmware that causes them to be put into infiniband mode, so on reboot of a TrueNAS server they stop functioning and show as “UNKNOWN” in the network list. Updating the firmware solves this issue.

I booted from an Ubuntu 22.04 live DVD in order to update the firmware. I wasn’t able to get the firmware tools to work correctly under TrueNAS CORE (FreeBSD based).

1. Download the firmware tools
   • https://network.nvidia.com/products/adapter-software/firmware-tools/
2. Extract
3. Install
   • sudo apt install gcc make dkms -y
   • ./install.sh
4. mst start
5. mlxconfig -d /dev/mst/mt4099_pci_cr0 query
   • Locate the Board ID which is the PSID
6. Download the new firmware and match the PSID
   • https://network.nvidia.com/support/firmware/connectx3en/
7. Extract
8. Flash
   • flint -d /dev/mst/mt4099_pci_cr0 -i XXXXXXXXXXXXX.bin burn
9. Shutdown then power back on

• https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/flashing-stock-mellanox-firmware-to-oem-emc-connectx-3-ib-ethernet-dual-port-qsfp-adapter.20525/#post-198015

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