This document provides instructions on how to build container with NVIDIA NIC drivers, precompiled for specific kernel version.

Doca-driver container is designed to build and install NVIDIA NIC drivers as part of NVIDIA Network Operator solution.

Before you begin, ensure that you have the following prerequisites:

Common:

1. Docker (Ubuntu) / Podman (RH) installed on your build system.
2. Web access to NVIDIA NIC drivers sources¹.

RHEL:

1. Active subscription and login credentials for registry.redhat.io².

RHCOS:

1. oc CLI tool ³.
2. OpenShift pull secret ⁴.

To build the precompiled container, the Dockerfile is constructed in a multistage fashion.
This approach is used to optimize the resulting container image size and reduce the number of dependencies included in the final image.

The Dockerfile consists of the following stages:

1. Base Image Update: The base image is updated and common requirements are installed. This stage sets up the basic environment for the subsequent stages.

2. Download Driver Sources: This stage downloads the Mellanox OFED driver sources to the specified path. It prepares the necessary files for the driver build process.

3. Build Driver: The driver is built using the downloaded sources and installed on the container. This stage ensures that the driver is compiled and configured correctly for the target system.

4. Install precompiled driver: Finally, the precompiled driver is installed on clean container. This stage sets up the environment to run the NVIDIA NIC drivers on the target system.

Before building the container, you need to provide following parameters as build-arg for container build:

1. D_OS: The Linux distribution (e.g., ubuntu22.04 / rhel9.2)
2. D_ARCH: Compiled Architecture
3. D_BASE_IMAGE: Base container image
4. D_KERNEL_VER: The target kernel version (e.g., 5.15.0-25-generic / 5.14.0-284.32.1.el9_2.x86_64)
5. D_OFED_VERSION: NVIDIA NIC drivers version (e.g., 24.01-0.3.3.1)

1. D_BASE_IMAGE: DriverToolKit container image

2. D_FINAL_BASE_IMAGE: Final container image, to install compiled driver

1. D_BASE_IMAGE: DriverToolKit container image

In order to get the specific DTK container image for a specific OpenShift release, run:

oc adm release info <OCP_VERSION> --image-for=driver-toolkit

For example, for OpenShift 4.16.0:

# oc adm release info 4.16.0 --image-for=driver-toolkit
quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev@sha256:dde3cd6a75d865a476aa7e1cab6fa8d97742401e87e0d514f3042c3a881e301f

Then pull the DTK image locally using your pull-secret:

podman pull --authfile=/path/to/pull-secret.txt docker:https://quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev@sha256:dde3cd6a75d865a476aa7e1cab6fa8d97742401e87e0d514f3042c3a881e301f

2. D_FINAL_BASE_IMAGE: Final container image, to install compiled driver

RHEL example:

# podman build \  
    --build-arg D_OS=rhel9.2 \  
    --build-arg D_ARCH=x86_64 \  
    --build-arg D_KERNEL_VER=5.14.0-284.32.1.el9_2.x86_64 \  
    --build-arg D_OFED_VERSION=24.01-0.3.3.1 \  
    --build-arg D_BASE_IMAGE="registry.redhat.io/openshift4/driver-toolkit-rhel9:v4.13.0-202309112001.p0.gd719bdc.assembly.stream" \  
    --build-arg D_FINAL_BASE_IMAGE=registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/ubi:latest \  
    --tag 24.01-0.3.3.1-0-5.14.0-284.32.1.el9_2-rhel9.2-amd64 \  
    -f RHEL_Dockerfile \  
    --target precompiled .

RHCOS example:

# podman build \
    --build-arg D_OS=rhcos4.16 \
    --build-arg D_ARCH=x86_64 \
    --build-arg D_KERNEL_VER=5.14.0-427.22.1.el9_4.x86_64 \
    --build-arg D_OFED_VERSION=24.01-0.3.3.1 \
    --build-arg D_BASE_IMAGE="quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev@sha256:dde3cd6a75d865a476aa7e1cab6fa8d97742401e87e0d514f3042c3a881e301f" \
    --build-arg D_FINAL_BASE_IMAGE=registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/ubi:9.4 \
    --tag 24.01-0.3.3.1-0-5.14.0-427.22.1.el9_4.x86_64-rhcos4.16-amd64 \
    -f RHEL_Dockerfile \
    --target precompiled .

Ubuntu example:

# docker build \  
    --build-arg D_OS=ubuntu22.04 \  
    --build-arg D_ARCH=x86_64 \  
    --build-arg D_BASE_IMAGE=ubuntu:24.04 \  
    --build-arg D_KERNEL_VER=5.15.0-25-generic \  
    --build-arg D_OFED_VERSION=24.01-0.3.3.1 \  
    --tag 24.01-0.3.3.1-0-5.15.0-25-generic-ubuntu22.04-amd64 \  
    -f Ubuntu_Dockerfile \  
    --target precompiled .