Unix System Admin Tools

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

 I am new to this forum and to FPGAs therefore excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject and guide me in the right direction.  I am Linux System Admin and our organization is considering FPGAs for our specialized software. I can find a lot of stuff on the forum and on Altera website about design tools and techniques but nothing from the perspective of a system admin.  Is there something from the deployment and support tooling side like checking device statistics, traces, logs etc.  I understand that an FPGA is programmable and it is dependent on the usage/connectivity of the device that logs and tools could be developed/used but is there any generic area that someone can guide me to.  Thanks, Aalishan

[Altera_Forum]

Embedded Linux like the distributions Altera uses are very light weight. They won't have as many admin tools as are found in a server or desktop distribution. You can build any other tools but I wouldn't recommend it. These systems don't have the CPU or memory resources to support much overhead. I suggest minimal changes to the standard distribution other than what is needed for your application. In particular, don't provide a path to the internet, or even your LAN as lots of security stuff has been removed.

[Altera_Forum]

Hi Galfonz, 

 Thanks for the reply. We plan on using them by connecting them to our existing servers via PCIe. Thus we will not be using the minimal Linux capabilities that come along with it but a full RHEL version.  I was looking for some tools that could provide us stats/diagnostic info/traces etc.  Thanks,

[Altera_Forum]

In that case use the usual red hat tools. I don't know where, but I'd guess someone has compiled them for ARM based systems. If you can't find any, you can download source and compile them yourself. As long as you aren't talking kernel modules, you should be OK.

[Altera_Forum]

Thanks.. Will look into that.

[Altera_Forum]

What are you trying to do with them? FPGAs are massively power hungry compared to stand alone CPUs and much slower and less powerful. Aer you trying to build some custom co-processor? 

FPGAs are not meant for running a server, but could be used to accelerate some functionality.

[Altera_Forum]

What we are trying to do is to either use them as coprocessors or use them infront of NIC interfaces. I was looking for something that is already available from Linux operational support perspective and not from a design perspective as we have designers to take care of that. I was looking into some performance/diagnostic tooling that is already available but seems like we have to write our own modules.