How To View Mellanox NIC Port Status And Optical Module Information Using MST Tools

1. Introduction to the MFT Tool

MFT (Mellanox/NVIDIA Firmware Tools) is a set of firmware management utilities for querying firmware details, performing firmware upgrades, and other configuration tasks.

It includes four main components: mst, mlxburn, flint, and Debug Utilities. For full specifications, refer to the official NVIDIA documentation.

Table 1 NVIDIA MFT Overview

NVIDIA Firmware Tools (MFT) The MFT package is a set of firmware management tools used to: · Generate a standard or customized NVIDIA firmware image Querying for firmware information · Burn a firmware image The following is a list of the available tools in MFT, together with a brief description of what each tool performs.
MFT Tools
Tool	Description
mst	This tool provides the following functions: * Starts/stops the register access driver * Lists the available mst devices
mlxburn	This tool provides the following functions: * Generation of a standard or customized NVIDIA firmware image for burning (in binary or.mlx format) * Burning an image to the Flash/EEPROM attached to a NVIDIA HCA or switch device * Displaying the VPD (Vital Product Data)of an NVIDIA network adapter
flint	This tool burns a firmware binary image or an expansion ROM image to the Flash device of a NVIDIA network adapter/gateway/switch device.It includes query functions to the burnt firmware image and to the binary image file.
Debug Utilities	A set of debug utilities(e.g, itrace, fwtrace, mlxtrace, mlxdump, mstdump, mlxmcg, wqdump, mcra, mlxi2c, i2c, mget_temp, and pckt_drop)