Enterprise appliance upgrade to R81.20

[Alex-]

Posting this in case it's useful for anyone.

I've upgraded today a VSX environment running on Enterprise appliances with CPUSE Clean Install.

This environment has 40G connectivity and the CPUSE verifier gave me this.

Info: Initiating verify of Check_Point_R81.20_T631_Fresh_Install_and_Upgrade.tgz...
Interactive mode is enabled. Press CTRL + C to exit (this will not stop the operation)
Result: Clean Install: Installation is allowed.
(2 warnings) • Based on a system check, a firmware update may be necessary on one or more network cards to bring them up to date with the current Gaia network drivers. This update is a one-time process which could take several minutes, and is executed after Gaia OS install is finished and has rebooted post-installation. After the firmware update is complete, the system will reboot once more in order to apply the new firmware. Please do not reboot or shut the system down during this time.
• A Jumbo Hotfix Accumulator (HFA) is installed on this server. To align with this Jumbo HFA after the upgrade, install the latest Jumbo HFA Take.
Upgrade: Upgrade is allowed.

Post-upgrade, the gateway didn't provide anymore messages in the CPUSE interface nor rebooted. I contacted support and the solution is to use ethtool to verify the version by running ethtool -i <interface> .

Previous driver:

driver: mlx5_core
version: 4.6-1.0.1 (14 Jan 21)
firmware-version: 12.22.1002 (CP_0010110027)
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:86:00.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: yes
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: yes

New driver: 

driver: mlx5_core
version: 5.5-1.0.3 (13 May 22)
firmware-version: 12.22.1002 (CP_0010110027)
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:86:00.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: yes
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: yes

So it looks like the upgrade is done without reboot and a suggestion would be to have this shown in CPUSE post-upgrade somehow. Because even if it's logged somewhere, the CPUSE verifier doesn't say where and which kind of interfaces and drivers will be changed.

[PhoneBoy · Accepted solution]

R81.20 uses a new(er) Linux kernel with updated drivers to match.
It appears the mlx5_core drivers (used for 40GB NICs, as I recall) got a major update.
In a few cases, the firmware on the NIC card does need to be updated, but it doesn't appear it was necessary in your case.

[Dario_Perez]

After upgrade during first boot you can see the driver installation process. 

only an extra reboot nothing to do manually

[Lesley]

I think this is also stated in Jumbo release notes. Looks something like: UPDATE: Added driver and firmware update support for Dual-Wide 10/25/40/100G cards as a replacement option for

depends also from what version or take you came from.