ipmctl

ipmctl is a utility for configuring and managing Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory modules (PMem).

It supports functionality to:

• Discover PMems on the platform.
• Provision the platform memory configuration.
• View and update the firmware on PMems.
• Configure data-at-rest security on PMems.
• Track health and performance of PMems.
• Debug and troubleshoot PMems.

ipmctl refers to the following interface components:

• libipmctl: An Application Programming Interface (API) library for managing PMems.
• ipmctl: A Command Line Interface (CLI) application for configuring and managing PMems from the command line.

Workarounds

Slow Firmware Updates

When using 02.00.00.x versions of ipmctl software to update or downgrade firmware on Intel® Optane™ PMem 100 Series modules, please use the “-lpmb” CLI option (use DDRT Large Payload transfer). Otherwise the operation may take significantly longer than it normally would.

Commands Fail on Older Platforms

Some platforms that targeted the Gen 100 modules do not generate a ACPI PMTT table which causes ipmctl (version v02.00.00.xxxx) commands to fail. Particularly

• create -goal
• show -topology
• show -memoryresources
• show -dimm

If these commands are ran with -v option they present a message about failing to get the PMTT table.

A corrected version is being developed and will hopefully be available soon. Until that is available the best option is to use ipmctl v01.00.00.xxxx or go through the BIOS menus.

Releases

01.00.00.xxxx (master_1_0 branch) is for Intel Optane Persistent Memory 100 Series

02.00.00.xxxx (master_2_0 branch) is for Intel Optane Persistent Memory 200 Series (and is backwards compatible with 100 series)

The development branch contains what will likely become the 03.00.00.xxxx branch.

Note: Branches may differ fundamentally. Please pay close attention to README.md of the respective branch.

Packages

Some distributions include ipmctl allowing installation via their package manager. For example (on Fedora):

dnf install ipmctl

This will update the required dependencies.

For systems that cannot reach the Internet use another system to download the following rpms required to install ipmctl and then copy them to the original system (e.g. via thumb drive).

ipmctl.rpm, libipmctl.rpm, libsafec.rpm (only needed for 1.x releases), libndctl, json-c.rpm

Run

rpm –ivh *.rpm

CentOS and RHEL systems maybe able to use an EPEL package found at: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/ipmctl

OpenSUSE and SLES packages can be found at: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/hardware:nvdimm/ipmctl

Ubuntu releases can be found at: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ipmctl

libndctl

ipmctl depends on libndctl (ndctl-libs).

It can be found here https://github.com/pmem/ndctl if not available as a package.

Build

Note: Each branch may require different building procedures. Please follow README.md of the respective branch.

Specific Instructions Reported as Working on SUSE for build in home directory

Replace homedir with the actual account

git clone https://github.com/intel/ipmctl.git

zypper in libndctl-devel ruby2.5-rubygem-asciidoctor

cd ipmctl

mkdir output

cd output

cmake -DRELEASE=ON -DSAFECLIB_SRC_DOWNLOAD_AND_STATIC_LINK=ON -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/homedir/ipmctl/ ..

make all

Specific Instructions Reported as Working on RHEL7.6, CentOS7.6 and Fedora 30.

Ipmctl has dependency on libsafec-devel (for 1.x builds only), libndctl-devel and rubygem-asciidoctor

• copr/jhli repo has libipmctl and its dependency, libsafec-devel.
  • cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

  wget https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/jhli/ipmctl/repo/epel-7/jhli-ipmctl-epel-7.repo
  wget https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/jhli/safeclib/repo/epel-7/jhli-safeclib-epel-7.repo

  * This should bring down both libipmctl and its dependency, libsafec-devel and

• epel repos has rubygem-asciidoctor
  • get the epel repos

 yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

• Enable extra packages in RHEL for ndctl-devel or any other dependencies
  • EPEL packages may depend on packages from these repositories:

# subscription-manager repos --enable "rhel-*-optional-rpms" --enable "rhel-*-extras-rpms"  --enable "rhel-ha-for-rhel-*-server-rpms"

• Install the prerequisite packages

sudo yum install ndctl ndctl-libs ndctl-devel libsafec rubygem-asciidoctor

• Either Follow ipmctl make, rpmbuild instructions, or install the ipmctl package

Linux

The latest stable Linux kernel version available is recommended.

libndctl-devel package is required.

All other dependencies are widely available.

mkdir output && cd output
cmake -DRELEASE=ON -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..
make -j all
sudo make install

build artifacts can be found in output/release

To build RPMs:

./rpmbuild.sh xx.xx.xx.xxxx

The RPMs will be in output/rpmbuild/RPMS/

Windows

Install Visual Studio 2017 (or newer). Be sure to install optional component:

• Workloads -> Desktop Development with C++
• Individual Components -> Compilers, build tools, and runtimes -> Visual C++ tools for CMake

Open as a CMake project. See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/cmake-projects-in-visual-studio