Device Driver Updates

Scyld ClusterWare releases are tested on many different machine configurations, but it is impossible to provide device drivers for hardware unknown at release time.

Most problems with unsupported hardware or device-specific problems are resolved by updating to a newer device driver. Some devices may not yet be supported under Linux. Check with your hardware vendor.

The Scyld ClusterWare architecture makes most driver updates simple. Drivers are installed and updated on the master node exactly as with a single machine installation. The new drivers are immediately available to compute nodes, although already-loaded drivers are not replaced.

There are two irregular device driver types that require special actions: disk drivers and network drivers, both of which apply to the compute nodes. In both cases, the drivers must be available to load additional drivers and programs, and are thus packaged in initial RAM disk images.

Another irregular instance is where drivers must execute scripts when they load; one example is Infiniband. Contact the hardware vendor or Scyld support if you have difficulty with the script that loads the driver.