Installation

Warning

Before proceeding with the installation, make sure to complete the steps in System Preparation.

Cloning the Repositories

To clone the Git repository containing the hard- and software implementation of FlueNT10G to the working directory defined by the environment variable set in the System Preparation steps, execute the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/aoeldemann/fluent10g.git $FLUENT10G/src
cd $FLUENT10G/src
git submodule init
git submodule update

The Go package containing the software source code is located in a separate repository, which is included in the main repository as a Git submodule. The last two commands initialize this submodule repository and fetch the contents from GitHub.

Hardware

Moving on to the hardware …

FPGA Bitstream Generation

Before proceeding with the bitstream generation, make sure that Xilinx Vivado 2018.3 is installed on your system and that a license for the Xilinx 10G Ethernet IP core is available. The bitstream can then be generated using the following command:

make -C $FLUENT10G/src hw

Synthesis and implementation will take a while, so please be patient! :-) If everything goes well, the bistream file should be located at $FLUENT10G/src/hardware/project/fluent10g.runs/impl_1/fluent10g_wrapper.bit.

Programming the FPGA

First start a Xilinx Hardware Server:

hw_server

Open a new terminal and program the FPGA:

FPGA_HOST=localhost make -C $FLUENT10G/src/hardware program

Note

The FPGA_HOST environment variable value specified when running the make command determines the hostname of the machine running the Xilinx Hardware Server. Change the value if the FPGA that shall be programmed is plugged into a remote machine.

Note

Alternatively, the FPGA can be programmed using the hardware manager of the Xilinx Vivado GUI. To do so, open the generated project file located at $FLUENT10G/src/hardware/project/fluent10g.xpr in Vivado.

Finally, reboot the machine containing the FPGA board (PCI Express device reenumeration may be sufficient, however it did not work for our host system).

shutdown -r now

Software

All measurement applications, which control the behavior of the FlueNT10G network tester, rely on the gofluent10g Go package. To allow Go applications to use the package, it must be located in the GOPATH (see its configuration in the System Preparation section). Execute the following commands to create a symbolic link pointing to the gofluent10g package, which can then be found by other Go applications:

mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/aoeldemann
ln -s $FLUENT10G/src/software/gofluent10g $GOPATH/src/github.com/aoeldemann/gofluent10g

Then, change into the package’s directory and install its dependencies:

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/aoeldemann/gofluent10g
go get

Done! Both hard- and software should now be ready to go.