ibacm(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | QUICK START GUIDE | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

ibacm(8)                          ibacm                         ibacm(8)

NAME         top

       ibacm - address and route resolution services for InfiniBand.

SYNOPSIS         top

       ibacm [-D] [-P] [-A addr_file] [-O option_file]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The IB ACM implements and provides a framework for name, address,
       and route (path) resolution services over InfiniBand.  It is
       intended to address connection setup scalability issues running
       MPI applications on large clusters.  The IB ACM provides
       information needed to establish a connection, but does not
       implement the CM protocol.

       A primary user of the ibacm service is the librdmacm library.
       This enables applications to make use of the ibacm service
       without code changes or needing to be aware that the service is
       in use.  librdmacm versions 1.0.12 - 1.0.15 can invoke IB ACM
       services when built using the --with-ib_acm option.  Version
       1.0.16 and newer of librdmacm will automatically use the IB ACM
       if it is installed.  The IB ACM services tie in under the
       rdma_resolve_addr, rdma_resolve_route, and rdma_getaddrinfo
       routines.  For maximum benefit, the rdma_getaddrinfo routine
       should be used, however existing applications should still see
       significant connection scaling benefits using the calls available
       in librdmacm 1.0.11 and previous releases.

       The IB ACM is focused on being scalable, efficient, and
       extensible.  It implements a plugin architecture that allows a
       vendor to supply its proprietary provider in addition to the
       default provider.  The current default provider implementation
       ibacmp limits network traffic, SA interactions, and centralized
       services.  Ibacmp supports multiple resolution protocols in order
       to handle different fabric topologies.

       The IB ACM package is comprised of three components: the ibacm
       core service, the default provider ibacmp shared library, and a
       test/configuration utility - ib_acme.  All three are userspace
       components and are available for Linux.  Additional details are
       given below.

OPTIONS         top

       -D     run in daemon mode (default)

       -P     run as standard process

       -A addr_file
              address configuration file

       -O option_file
              option configuration file

       --systemd
              Enable systemd integration. This includes optional socket
              activation of the daemon's listening socket.

QUICK START GUIDE         top

       1. Prerequisites: libibverbs and libibumad must be installed.
       The IB stack should be running with IPoIB configured.  These
       steps assume that the user has administrative privileges.

       2. Install the IB ACM package.  This installs ibacm, ibacmp,
       ib_acme, and init.d scripts.

       3. Run 'ibacm' as administrator to start the ibacm daemon.

       4. Optionally, run 'ib_acme -d <dest_ip> -v' to verify that the
       ibacm service is running.

       5. Install librdmacm, using the build option --with-ib_acm if
       needed.  This build option is not needed with librdmacm 1.0.17 or
       newer.  The librdmacm will automatically use the ibacm service.
       On failures, the librdmacm will fall back to normal resolution.

       6. You can use ib_acme -P to gather performance statistics from
       the local ibacm daemon to see if the service is working
       correctly.  Similarly, the command ib_acme -e could be used to
       enumerate all endpoints created by the local ibacm service.

NOTES         top

       ib_acme:

       The ib_acme program serves a dual role.  It acts as a utility to
       test ibacm operation and help verify if the ibacm service and
       selected protocol is usable for a given cluster configuration.
       Additionally, it automatically generates ibacm configuration
       files to assist with or eliminate manual setup.

       ibacm configuration files:

       The ibacm service relies on two configuration files.

       The ibacm_addr.cfg file contains name and address mappings for
       each IB <device, port, pkey> endpoint.  Although the names in the
       ibacm_addr.cfg file can be anything, ib_acme maps the host name
       to the IB endpoints.  IP addresses, on the other hand, are
       assigned dynamically.  If the address file cannot be found, the
       ibacm service will attempt to create one using default values.

       The ibacm_opts.cfg file provides a set of configurable options
       for the ibacm core service and default provider, such as timeout,
       number of retries, logging level, etc.  ib_acme generates the
       ibacm_opts.cfg file using static information.  If an option file
       cannot be found, ibacm will use default values.

       ibacm:

       The ibacm service is responsible for resolving names and
       addresses to InfiniBand path information and caching such data.
       It should execute with administrative privileges.

       The ibacm implements a client interface over TCP sockets, which
       is abstracted by the librdmacm library.  One or more providers
       can be loaded by the core service, depending on the
       configuration.  In the default provider ibacmp, one or more back-
       end protocols are used to satisfy user requests.  Although ibacmp
       supports standard SA path record queries on the back-end, it also
       supports a resolution protocol based on multicast traffic.  The
       latter is not usable on all fabric topologies, specifically ones
       that may not have reversible paths or fabrics using torus
       routing.  Users should use the ib_acme utility to verify that
       multicast protocol is usable before running other applications.

       Conceptually, the default provider ibacmp implements an ARP like
       protocol and either uses IB multicast records to construct path
       record data or queries the SA directly, depending on the selected
       route protocol.  By default, the ibacmp provider uses and caches
       SA path record queries.

       Specifically, all IB endpoints join a number of multicast groups.
       Multicast groups differ based on rates, mtu, sl, etc., and are
       prioritized.  All participating endpoints must be able to
       communicate on the lowest priority multicast group.  The ibacmp
       assigns one or more names/addresses to each IB endpoint using the
       ibacm_addr.cfg file.  Clients provide source and destination
       names or addresses as input to the service, and receive as output
       path record data.

       The service maps a client's source name/address to a local IB
       endpoint.  If the destination name/address is not cached locally
       in the default provider, it sends a multicast request out on the
       lowest priority multicast group on the local endpoint.  The
       request carries a list of multicast groups that the sender can
       use.  The recipient of the request selects the highest priority
       multicast group that it can use as well and returns that
       information directly to the sender.  The request data is cached
       by all endpoints that receive the multicast request message.  The
       source endpoint also caches the response and uses the multicast
       group that was selected to construct or obtain path record data,
       which is returned to the client.

       The current implementation of the provider ibacmp has several
       additional restrictions:

       - The ibacmp is limited in its handling of dynamic changes.
       ibacm must be stopped and restarted if a cluster is reconfigured.

       - Support for IPv6 has not been verified.

       - The number of multicast groups that an endpoint can support is
       limited to 2.

       The ibacmp contains several internal caches.  These include
       caches for GID and LID destination addresses.  These caches can
       be optionally preloaded. ibacm supports the OpenSM dump_pr plugin
       "full" PathRecord format which is used to preload these caches.
       The file format is specified in the ibacm_opts.cfg file via the
       route_preload setting which should be set to full_opensm_v1 for
       this file format.  Default format is none which does not preload
       these caches.  See dump_pr.notes.txt in dump_pr for more
       information on the full_opensm_v1 file format and how to
       configure OpenSM to generate this file.

       Additionally, the name, IPv4, and IPv6 caches can be be preloaded
       by using the addr_preload option.  The default is none which does
       not preload these caches. To preload these caches, set this
       option to acm_hosts and configure the addr_data_file
       appropriately.

SEE ALSO         top

       ibacm(7), ib_acme(1), rdma_cm(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the rdma-core (RDMA Core Userspace Libraries
       and Daemons) project.  Information about the project can be found
       at ⟨https://github.com/linux-rdma/rdma-core⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, send it to
       linux-rdma@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/linux-rdma/rdma-core.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
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       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
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ibacm                          2014-06-16                       ibacm(8)

Pages that refer to this page: ib_acme(1)ibacm(7)