E810-CQDA2 PTP hardware timestamping enable

[JohnDoe6]

Hi,

  I have E810-CDQA2 100Gbps NIC card in a ubuntu 24.04 machine. The ptp is not locking to the PTP packets coming from a multicast ptp server. With tcpdump I have verified that the PTP sync packets are indeed arriving at this ubuntu machine via this NIC card. However the ptp4l is picking up the local clock, instead of picking up the foreign master, as shown below:

$ sudo ptp4l -f multicast-2step.cfg -i eno1np0 -m
[sudo] password for labuser:
ptp4l[450707.133]: selected /dev/ptp2 as PTP clock
ptp4l[450707.133]: port 1 (eno1np0): INITIALIZING to LISTENING on INIT_COMPLETE
ptp4l[450707.133]: port 0 (/var/run/ptp4l): INITIALIZING to LISTENING on INIT_COMPLETE
ptp4l[450707.133]: port 0 (/var/run/ptp4lro): INITIALIZING to LISTENING on INIT_COMPLETE
ptp4l[450715.098]: selected local clock 6cfe54.fffe.9a1cb0 as best master

To troubleshoot this I am trying to check if hardware timestamping is enabled on this NIC card. When I check hardware timestamping capabilities of this NIC card, I am NOT seeing capabilities listed on the right side (usually seen on the right side inside brackets):
$ ethtool -T eno1np0
Time stamping parameters for eno1np0:
Capabilities:
hardware-transmit
software-transmit
hardware-receive
software-receive
software-system-clock
hardware-raw-clock
PTP Hardware Clock: 2
Hardware Transmit Timestamp Modes:
off
on
Hardware Receive Filter Modes:
none
all

Here is the driver version that I am using:

$ ethtool -i eno1np0
driver: ice
version: 6.11.0-19-generic
firmware-version: 4.30 0x8001bcf8 1.3429.0
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:01:00.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: yes
supports-eeprom-access: yes
supports-register-dump: yes
supports-priv-flags: yes

Questions:

How do I enable hardware timestamping for this NIC card?
How do I get the NIC capabilities to show up in when I do "ethtool -T eno1np0" ?
Appreciate any help.
Thanks.

[Sreelakshmi1]

Hi JohnDoe6,

Greetings!

Thank you for posting in Intel community forum!

Regarding the hardware timestamping capability issue, please allow me some time to check with my resources. We will get back to you as soon as we have an update.

Best Regards,

Sreelakshmi

Intel Customer Support Technician

[ManoranjanDas]

Hi JohnDoe6,

Greetings!

Apologies for the delay in response.

Regarding your query, we recommend updating the driver to version 1.16.3 and the NVM firmware to version 4.7.

Once these updates are applied, please follow the user guide link below for the PTP configuration:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/secure/design/internal/content-details.html?DocID=722960

If you require any further assistance or have additional questions, please feel free to reach out. We’re here to help!

Best regards,

Manoranjan

Intel Customer Support Technician

[JohnDoe6]

Hi Manoranjan,
 Thanks for the reply. I managed to get the NVM firmware updated to version 4.70.

I have downloaded the ice-1.16.3.tar.gz. Inside the scripts folder I don't see a pre-built executable to run.  What do I need to do to install it, without building it ? I do not want to generate keys and would like to use the prebuilt executable if it is already signed with intel keys.
Do I simply run "ice-1.16.3/src/make install" ? Could you please provide me a simple sequence of commands to update the ice driver ?

On another note, is it possible to get pps (pulse per second) signal out of the pins available on the E810-CQDA2 ? Is PPS available on any of the pins in J2, J43, J1 or any pin on the board, so that we can solder thin wires to get the PPS out ? I am aware that E810-CQDA2T has PPS coming out in external sma connectors, but we have already bought large quantity of cards of E810-CDQA2 and would like to get PPS out of these cards, if possible. Could you please provide relevant pinout to access the PPS?

Best regards,
John.

[Sazirah]

Hi JohnDoe6,

Thank you for your response.

I would like to check if you have tried to install network adapter driver in link below?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19630/intel-network-adapter-driver-for-e810-series-devices-under-linux.html

Additionally, you may refer to GitHub link below for more further information:

https://github.com/intel/ethernet-linux-ice

Regards,

Sazzy_Intel

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Sazirah]

Hi JohnDoe6,

Good day,

This is related to your enquiries above, I would like to check if the issue has resolved?

If you have any questions or clarifications, please let me know.

Regards,

Sazzy_Intel

Intel Customer Support Technician