1. Dolphin PCI Express Hardware

1.1.1. Although I have properly installed the adapter in a Cluster Node and its LEDs are on, I am told (i.e. during the installation) that this Cluster Node does not contain a Dolphin PCI Express adapter!
1.1.2. The Dolphin driver dis_irm refuses to load, or driver install never completes. Running dmesg shows that the kernel message log contains the line Out of vmalloc space. What's wrong?
1.1.1. Although I have properly installed the adapter in a Cluster Node and its LEDs are on, I am told (i.e. during the installation) that this Cluster Node does not contain a Dolphin PCI Express adapter!
1.1.2. The Dolphin driver dis_irm refuses to load, or driver install never completes. Running dmesg shows that the kernel message log contains the line Out of vmalloc space. What's wrong?

1.1.1.

Although I have properly installed the adapter in a Cluster Node and its LEDs are on, I am told (i.e. during the installation) that this Cluster Node does not contain a Dolphin PCI Express adapter!

Please try to re-install the adapter card making sure it is properly fitted into the slot.

1.1.2.

The Dolphin driver dis_irm refuses to load, or driver install never completes. Running dmesg shows that the kernel message log contains the line Out of vmalloc space. What's wrong?

The problem is that the Dolphin PCI Express adapter requires more virtual address space than supported by the installed kernel. This problem has so far only been observed on 32 bit operating systems. There are two alternative solutions:

  1. If you are building a small cluster you may be able to run your application with less PCI Express prefetch address space. You can change the address space size for the adapter card by using dis_config with the command set-prefetch-mem-size. A value of 64 or 16 will most likely overcome the problem. This operation can also be performed from the command line using the options -c to specify the card number (1 or 2) and -spms to specify the prefetch memory size in Megabytes:

    # dis_config -c 1 -spms 64
    Card 1 - Prefetch space memory size is set to 64 MB
    A reboot of the machine is required to make the changes take effect. 

    When rebooting the machine, the problem should be solved.

  2. If reducing the prefetch memory size is not desired, the related resources in the kernel have to be increased. For x86-based machines, this is achieved by passing the kernel option vmalloc=256m and the parameter uppermem=524288 at boot time.

    This is done by editing /boot/grub/grub.conf as shown in the following example:

    title CentOS-4 i386 (2.6.9-11.ELsmp)
            root (hd0,0)
            uppermem 524288
            kernel /i386/vmlinuz-2.6.9-11.ELsmp ro root=/dev/sda6 rhgb quiet vmalloc=256m
            initrd /i386/initrd-2.6.9-11.ELsmp.img