New MPSS released today

[BelindaLiviero]

An update to the MPSS was released today.   Users who are running Intel^® MPSS 3.2-1 (released March 17 2014)  or 3.2.1-1 (released April 10 2014) are strongly advised to update to this release, as it contains important security fixes.

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-manycore-platform-software-stack-mpss

[jimdempseyatthecove]

Belinda,

look near/at top of this forum for my post relating to an installation error with 3.2.3

Jim Dempsey

[TimP]

I hope we will be notified when future MPSS drop support for old hardware, so we don't brick our old boxes.

So far, the only problem I encountered with KNC B0 is the loss of password-less ssh.

[jimdempseyatthecove]

>>I hope we will be notified when future MPSS drop support for old hardware, so we don't brick our old boxes

If this is a possibility, please insert in first page of readme and installation notes

***********************************************************
**** WARNING - DO NOT INSTALL ON HARDWARE VERSION PRIOR TO N.MM.nn
***********************************************************

Don't place this type of warning way back.

Jim Dempsey

[TaylorIoTKidd]

Jim,

Thank you for this note. We'll pass it on to the MPSS folk.

Regards
---
Taylor
 

[jimdempseyatthecove]

One other installation issue I came across that you might want to pass on. A Catch-22 type.

The installation for the firmware upgrade stated something like Do not install the firmware unless your firmware at or above nnn.

Unfortunately, this message is placed in the installation sequence _after_ removal of prior mpss installation.... and the utility that obtains the firmware version requires the mpss installation to be up and running. IOW if the newer mpss utilities and driver are incompatible with the older firmware, the user may unintentionally brick there MIC in the process of trying to work around this.

I think it would be best to prefix the installation/upgrade of MPSS with a check lists that can be run with the current (old) installation and which will produce the information necessary for later decisions.

Also, many of us people dealing with programming, are amazingly not interested in system administration. Please, do not assume the user knows how to load the mic.ko driver.

Jim Dempsey

[TaylorIoTKidd]

Noted.

Jim, thanks again.

[Frances_R_Intel]

It is unfortunate but not fatal that you aren't told you need to know your current firmware level until after you have uninstalled the previous MPSS. You should, in general, be able able to install the new rpm files, start the new mpss and use the new MPSS utilities to check the firmware level before installing the new firmware. If you can't read the firmware level with the new utilities, well, that is probably telling you something as well (like that you are really, really, really out of date). But at this point, you will not have bricked your card. Of course, you may, at that point, find that you really wish you still had the old MPSS installed. So, point taken. Hardware and firmware requirement must be stated right up front in the README.