Uninstalling Nvidia Cumulus from a Mellanox SN2010 switch and rolling back to Onyx OS
By default, our Mellanox SN2010 switches will be running the Nvidia Cumulus operating system to allow for better future proofing, however, there may be a necessity to roll the switches operating system back to Mellanox Onyx which has a much more mature implementation of many tools which are needed for dealing with SMPTE 2110 traffic. The switches runs an ‘Operating System’ in much the same way as a standard computer, and therefore changing OS is fairly simple using the inbuilt ONIE bootloader from which the switches OS runs when you power it up. You cannot run Cumulus and Onyx in a ‘dual boot’ configuration, this is not recommended or supported by Mellanox and would involve further partitioning the internal flash storage of the switch.
Mellanox Onyx OS Installer – download here
- Connect to the switch using a serial cable and the below details
|
Parameter |
Setting |
|---|---|
| Baud Rate | 115200 |
| Data bits | 8 |
| Stop bits | 1 |
| Parity | None |
| Flow Control | None |
- Login to the switch and restart it using –
reload- Keep an eye on the terminal window, as the switch reboots, you’ll see the Onie bootloader appear before the switches operating system starts. Press one of the arrow keys quickly on your keyboard to select items on the ONIE boot menu.
- Still using your arrow keys, select the option for ‘Uninstall OS’
- Sit back whilst the switches operating system is uninstalled. This might take a little while.
- Once the switch reboots you’ll only now be able to access the ONIE bootloader as the operating system has been removed. Select the option for ‘Install OS’.
- At your earliest convenience once booted into ‘Install OS’ mode, type
onie-discovery-stop- This will prevent the switch from automatically searching for a DHCP address and allow you to type on the command line.
- Give the switches management interface a static IP address on the same range as your laptop using the command
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.10- You should now be able to ping your laptop from the switch’s command line (192.168.1.9 shouild be replaced with the IP address of your laptop)
ping 192.168.1.9- Setup a HTTP webserver locally on your laptop using XAMPP or similar. Copy the file linked below into your ‘htdocs’ folder. This is the installer for the Mellanox Onyx operating system.
- Test you can access the installer by entering into a web browser on your laptop
http://192.168.1.9/X86_64-3.9.2504-installer.bin- If it’s working successfully, your browser should now attempt to download this file.
- Copy the working URL and move back into the switch terminal.
- Run the following command to move your working directory into the /var/tmp folder, ready to download the OS installer.
cd /var/tmp- Run the following command to download the installer from your laptops local web server
wget http://192.168.1.9/X86_64-3.9.2504-installer.bin- The installer can then be run using
onie-nos-install /var/tmp/X86_64-3.9.2504-installer.bin- The switch will then start the install of Mellanox Onyx operating system. This might take a little while. Once the installation is complete, the switch will reboot into the newly installed OS.
Leave a Reply