The ndctl
utility is used to manage the libnvdimm (non-volatile memory device) sub-system in the Linux Kernel. It is required for several Persistent Memory Developer Kit (PMDK) features if compiling from source. If ndctl is not available, the PMDK may not build all components and features. This page describes how to install ndctl using the Linux package repository or compiled from source code downloaded from the ndctl GitHub repository.
Microsoft Windows users can read the NVM documentation.
The ndctl utility is available in several Linux distro repositories.
1) Query the repository to identify if ndctl is delivered:
Fedora 21 or earlier
yum search ndctl
Fedora 22 or later
dnf repoquery ndctl
2) Install the ndctl utility
Fedora 21 or earlier
yum install ndctl
Fedora 22 or later
dnf install ndctl
The ndctl package is available on CentOS and RHEL 7.0 or later.
1) Query the repository to identify if ndctl is delivered:
yum search ndctl
2) Install the ndctl package
$ yum install ndctl
1) Query the repository to identify if ndctl is delivered:
$ zypper search ndctl
2) Install the ndctl package
$ zypper install ndctl
The ndctl package is available on Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) or later.
1) Query the repository to identify if ndctl is delivered using either the aptitude, apt-cache, or apt utilities
$ aptitude search ndctl$ apt-cache search ndctl$ apt search ndctl
2) Verify if the ndctl package is currently installed and check the version
$ apt list --installed ndctl
3) Install the ndctl package or update an installed package
$ sudo apt-get install ndctl
The ndctl package is available on Debian 10 (Buster) or later. See https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ndctl for up to date information.
1) Query available versions in configured repos:
$ apt policy ndctl
2) Query the repository to identify if ndctl is delivered using either the aptitude, apt-cache, or apt utilities
$ apt search ndctl
3) Verify if the ndctl package is currently installed and check the version
$ apt list --installed ndctl
4) Install the ndctl package or update an installed package
$ sudo apt install ndctl
Utility library for managing the libnvdimm (non-volatile memory device) sub-system in the Linux kernel and is not available for Windows.
If your system is behind a firewall and requires a proxy to access the Internet, configure dnf to use a proxy. Edit /etc/dnf/dnf.conf and add the following line
proxy=http://url:port/
You must set a complete URL, including the TCP port number. If your proxy server requires a username and password, specify these by adding following two settings in dnf.conf file.
proxy_username=YOUR-PROXY-USERNAME-HEREproxy_password=YOUR-SUPER-secrete-PASSWORD-HERE
There are a number of packages required for the build steps that may not be installed by default. For information about the required packages, see the "BuildRequires:" lines in ndctl.spec.in.
​https://github.com/pmem/ndctl/blob/master/ndctl.spec.in​
To successfully compile ndctl from source with documentation, the following packages are required
autoconf
automake
asciidoc (asciidoctor)
bash-completion
doxygen
gcc
gcc-c++ (g++)
git
glib2
glib2-devel
graphviz
json-c-devel
keyutils-libs-devel (libkeyutils-dev)
kmod
kmod-devel
libfabric
libfabric-devel
libtool
libudev-devel
libuuid-devel
ncurses
pandoc
pkg-config
rubygem-asciidoctor (asciidoctor)
xmlto
To install these prerequisites, use:
Fedora 21 or earlier
sudo yum install git gcc gcc-c++ autoconf automake asciidoc asciidoctor xmlto libtool pkg-config glib2 glib2-devel libfabric libfabric-devel doxygen graphviz pandoc ncurses kmod kmod-devel libudev-devel libuuid-devel json-c-devel keyutils-libs-devel
Fedora 22 or later
sudo dnf install git gcc gcc-c++ autoconf automake asciidoc asciidoctor xmlto libtool pkg-config glib2 glib2-devel libfabric libfabric-devel doxygen graphviz pandoc ncurses kmod kmod-devel libudev-devel libuuid-devel json-c-devel keyutils-libs-devel
Some of the required packages can be found in the EPEL repository. Verify the EPEL repository is active:
$ yum repolist
If the EPEL repository is not listed, install and activate it using:
$ sudo yum install epel-release
Install the required packages
$ sudo yum install git gcc gcc-c++ autoconf automake asciidoc bash-completion xmlto libtool pkgconfig glib2 glib2-devel libfabric libfabric-devel doxygen graphviz pandoc ncurses kmod kmod-devel libudev-devel libuuid-devel json-c-devel rubygem-asciidoctor keyutils-libs-devel
$ sudo zypper install -y git gcc gcc-c++ autoconf automake asciidoc bash-completion xmlto libtool pkg-config glib2 glib2-devel libfabric libfabric-devel doxygen graphviz pandoc ncurses kmod kmod-devel libudev-devel libuuid-devel json-c-devel rubygem-asciidoctor keyutils-libs-devel
For Ununtu 18.04 (Bionic) and Debian 9 (Stretch) or later:
$ sudo apt install -y git gcc g++ autoconf automake asciidoc asciidoctor bash-completion xmlto libtool pkg-config libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-dev libfabric1 libfabric-dev doxygen graphviz pandoc libncurses5 libkmod2 libkmod-dev libudev-dev uuid-dev libjson-c-dev libkeyutils-dev
For Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) and Debian 8 (Jessie):
Earlier releases of Ubuntu and Debian do not have libfabric1 or libfabric-dev available in the repository. If these libraries are required, you should compile them yourself. See https://github.com/ofiwg/libfabric​
$ sudo apt-get install -y git gcc g++ autoconf automake asciidoc asciidoctor bash-completion xmlto libtool pkg-config libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-dev doxygen graphviz pandoc libncurses5 libkmod2 libkmod-dev libudev-dev uuid-dev libjson-c-dev libkeyutils-dev
2.1) If you're behind a company proxy, configure git to work with your proxy server first. The following configures a HTTP and HTTPS proxy for all users. Refer to the git-config documentation for more options and information.
$ git config --global http.proxy http://proxyUsername:[email protected]:port​$ git config --global https.proxy https://proxyUsername:[email protected]:port
2.2) Create a working directory to clone the ndctl GitHub repository to, eg: 'downloads'
$ sudo mkdir /downloads$ sudo chmod +w /downloads
2.3) Clone the repository:
$ cd /downloads$ sudo git clone https://github.com/pmem/ndctl$ cd ndctl
The following configures ndctl to be installed in to the /usr/local directory.
$ sudo ./autogen.sh$ sudo ./configure CFLAGS='-g -O2' --prefix=/usr/local --sysconfdir=/etc --libdir=/usr/local/lib64$ sudo make
Note: If you want to compile with a different compiler other than gcc, you have to provide the CC and CXX environment variables. For example:
$ sudo make CC=clang CXX=clang++
These variables are independent and setting CC=clang does not set CXX=clang++.
To compile ndctl with debugging, use the --enable-debug
option:
$ sudo ./autogen.sh$ sudo ./configure CFLAGS='-g -O2' --enable-debug --prefix=/usr/local --sysconfdir=/etc --libdir=/usr/local/lib64$ sudo make
For a full list of configure options use:
$ ./configure --help
Once ndctl has successfully been compiled, it can be installed using the following:
$ sudo make install
The unit tests run by make check
require the nfit_test.ko module to be loaded. To build and install nfit_test.ko:
Obtain the kernel source. For example, git clone -b libnvdimm-for-next git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/nvdimm/nvdimm.git
Skip to step 3 if the kernel version is >= v4.8. Otherwise, for kernel versions < v4.8, configure the kernel to make some memory available to CMA (contiguous memory allocator). This will be used to emulate DAX. CONFIG_DMA_CMA=y
CONFIG_CMA_SIZE_MBYTES=200
or cma=200M
on the kernel command line.
Compile the libnvdimm sub-system as a module, make sure "zone device" memory is enabled, and enable the btt, pfn, and dax features of the sub-system: CONFIG_X86_PMEM_LEGACY=m
CONFIG_ZONE_DEVICE=y
CONFIG_LIBNVDIMM=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PMEM=m
CONFIG_ND_BLK=m
CONFIG_BTT=y
CONFIG_NVDIMM_PFN=y
CONFIG_NVDIMM_DAX=y
CONFIG_DEV_DAX_PMEM=m
Build and install the unit test enabled libnvdimm modules in the following order. The unit test modules need to be in place prior to the depmod
that runs during the final modules_install
make M=tools/testing/nvdimm
sudo make M=tools/testing/nvdimm modules_install
sudo make modules_install
Now run make check
in the ndctl source directory, or ndctl test
, if ndctl was built with --enable-test
.
The unit tests will validate that the environment is set up correctly before they try to run. If the platform is misconfigured, i.e. the unit test modules are not available, or the test versions of the modules are superseded by the "in-tree/production" version of the modules make check
will skip tests and report a message like the following in test/test-suite.log:
SKIP: libndctl==============test/init: nfit_test_init: nfit.ko: appears to be production version: /lib/modules/4.8.8-200.fc24.x86_64/kernel/drivers/acpi/nfit/nfit.ko.xz__ndctl_test_skip: explicit skip test_libndctl:2684nfit_test unavailable skipping tests
If the unit test modules are indeed available in the modules 'extra' directory the default depmod policy can be overridden by adding a file to /etc/depmod.d with the following contents:
override nfit * extraoverride device_dax * extraoverride dax_pmem * extraoverride libnvdimm * extraoverride nd_blk * extraoverride nd_btt * extraoverride nd_e820 * extraoverride nd_pmem * extra
The nfit_test module emulates pmem with memory allocated via vmalloc(). One of the side effects is that this breaks 'physically contiguous' assumptions in the driver. Use the --align=4K
option to ndctl create-namespace
to avoid these corner case scenarios.
To learn how to use the ndctl
utility, continue to the NDCTL User Guide within this collection.
See the latest documentation for the NVDIMM kernel sub-system here: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/nvdimm/nvdimm.git/tree/Documentation/nvdimm/nvdimm.txt?h=libnvdimm-for-next​