2. Installing

python-rdma relies on the standard Python distutils functionality for building and includes a setup.py script. The following will be required to build the module:

• Python 2.6 or later in the 2.x series. Python 3 is currently not supported.
• A working C compiler that distutils can find
• infiniband/verbs.h must be in the compiler search path
• The C compiler must be able to link against libibverbs
• Python C development support must be installed (eg python-dev on Debian)

The build process is simply:

$ ./setup.py build
[..]

Once built the library can be tested without installation by setting PYTHONPATH:

$ export PYTHONPATH=`pwd`/build/lib.*/
$ ./ibtool help

To install into /usr/local/ use ./setup.py install.

Note

Due to how Python searches for libraries the PYTHONPATH environment variable is still required to run the executable scripts, such as the test suite, included in the package.

If your system has IB libraries installed outside the system path, you need to create a setup.cfg similar to the following:

[build_ext]
include-dirs=/opt/ofa64-1.5.1/include
library-dirs=/opt/ofa64-1.5.1/lib
rpath=/opt/ofa64-1.5.1/lib

Prior to running ./setup.py build.

Note

Python 2.6 packages are available for RHEL and related via the Fedora EPEL. These packages perform a parallel install of Python and do not replace the system version. Eg http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/x86_64/repoview/python26.html

2.1. For Development

The module ships with a few pre-built things, to do development work the following will also be required:

• Pyrex >= 0.9.9
• Sphinx >= 0.6.6

To test the installation of the above tools do the following:

$ rm rdma/ibverbs.c
$ ./setup.py build docs

To ease development I recommend installing the following symlink:

$ (cd rdma ; ln -s ../build/lib.*/rdma/ibverbs.so .)

After which running Python programs from the top of the source tree will automatically have the correct PYTHONPATH and changes to the source itself will immediately be picked up without having to run ./setup.py build

However, be aware that changes to the Pyrex extension module will still require running ./setup.py build_ext to recompile.

The two required modules are easily configured in a private user directory as follows:

$ wget http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python/Pyrex/Pyrex-0.9.9.tar.gz
$ wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.6/S/Sphinx/Sphinx-1.0.7-py2.6.egg#md5=a547658740040dd87ef71fbf723e7962
$ tar -xzf Pyrex-0.9.9.tar.gz
$ ln -s Pyrex-0.9.9/Pyrex .
$ unzip Sphinx-1.0.7-py2.6.egg
$ export PYTHONPATH=`pwd`

Other approaches are possible as well.

2.1.1. Test Suite

The library includes a test suite built with unittest. To run the test suite the end port returned by rdma.get_end_port() must be connected to a small fabric. Some ways of running the suite:

$ ./run-tests.py                # Run everything
$ ./run-tests.py tests.verbs    # Only run the verbs test.

Note

The test suite exercises functionality that is known to make OpenSM crash. As of this writing OpenSM GIT has been fixed but the latest release (3.3.9) does not include the fix.