Unable to configure 544+M adaptor to 2 ethernet ports

[neduz]

Hello,

I have a few HPE FDR/EN 40 2 544+M Adapter/764283-B21 (bl460c mezzanine) cards, based on the Mellanox ConnectX3 Pro. So far I have used them succesfully in Gen9 bl460c blades, but now I also want to use them in Gen10 blades, also using CentOS 7.

Out of the box they come and are recognized as 2 infiniband ports, but I need ethernet mode. So I installed the MLNX_OFED_Linux package from HPE downloads, MLNX_OFED_LINUX-4.9-2.2.4.0-rhel7.9-x86_64.tar.gz (with a publication date of december 2020, most recent available that supports CentOS 7.9 I think)

This package cannot install the Firmware, but I got firmware from HPE downloads, version fw-ConnectX3Pro-rel-2_42_5056-764283-B21_Ax-CLP-8025-UEFI-14.11.49-FlexBoot-3.4.754.bin. This also seems the latest, but the release notes refer to MLNX_OFED_LINUX 4.7 as the latest driver package, unfortunately, the 4.7 seems not to support CentOS 7 and seems not maintained/obsoleted by 4.9... not sure of that however.

Anyway, connectx_port_config tool only works to switch the second port. I can change it back and forth between IB and ETH mode. But the first port always returns in the tool that the port will be ib mode after boot, and in the dmesg I find:

"mlx4_core requested port type for port 1 is not supported on this hca"

BTW: I first tried with the firmware that was installed out of the box (version 2.36.500), also with an older MLNX OFED package of version I had lying around - MLNX_OFED_LINUX-4.9-0.1.7.0-rhel7.8-x86_64, on a Centos 7.8 host (different one). I tried uninstalling & reinstalling the package, started from clean CentOS install, reset of the card config via mlxconfig, always with the same result.

PS: also tried via modprobe/mlx4_core.conf file with port_type_array=2,2, but that the result of that is still ib,eth, but now connectx_port_config returns "Not allowed to change port config".

What other options do I have to get this card configured in 2 Ethernet ports?