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This is an unsupported update of the original driver source for FusionIO cards. It comes with no warranty, it may cause DATA LOSS or CORRUPTION. It is designed for "VSL3" i.e. the first few generations of cards. Newer cards would require VSL4 (see below). You cannot use VSL4 on the older cards, and vice versa.

For the iomemory-vsl4 driver please go to the iomemory-vsl4 repo.

Please refer to the Fusion-io and OEM Part Numbers Matrix.

Driver support for FusionIO cards has been lagging behind kernel releases, effectively making these cards an expensive paperweight when running a distribution like Ubuntu / Arch / Fedora / ProxMox which all supply newer kernels than supported by the original drivers.

We've abandoned the notion of releases, Generally main should be checked out. main is completely backwards compatible for all 5. The latest working tested kernel is 6.1.1.

Historically releases were tagged, and were be checked out by their tag. The release tags follow Linux Kernel versions. E.g. v5.12.1 (A Fine Boi) will work on all 5.x kernels that are 5.12 and lower, but is not guaranteed to work on 5.13. v4.20.2 - Grey Dawn supports most kernels that pre-date 5.0. Again this way of following kernel releases has been abandoned. Please follow main.

Starting with Linux kernel 5.4.0, significant changes to the kernel were made that require additional boot time kernel flags for this driver to work. These affect AMD CPUs starting with 5.4.0, and Intel CPUs after about kernel 5.8.0.

Add the following to your /etc/default/grub by looking for GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="" and adding additional parameters inside the quotes. For AMD systems:

For Intel system:

Example: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet iommu=pt"

The driver is derived from the original iomemory-vsl-3.2.16.1732, but has several fixes and gone through rigorous cleaning of redundant unused and old code. Active development is done on branches and merged back to main (formerly master) when stable.

The modified source fixes several known bugs in the driver:

PRs and commits to main have gone through testing with Flexible I/O Tester. Testing for page_cache errors, and generic FIO checksumming on read and write and different block sizes. Non main branches are often in process of verification and under active development, and guaranteed not stable.

Note! For many systems, the best option is to use DKMS, using the instructions below. If you prefer to build the module directly, or to create a dpkg or rpm package, you can proceed with these options:

DKMS is recommended, but installation can also be done with the created packages.

Dynamic Kernel Module Support automates away the requirement of having to repackage the kernel module with every kernel and headers update that takes place on the system. This mechanism also makes sure that the driver for the new kernel actually works, or if the source needs refreshing.

Try building from main first as it works with most modern kernels up to about 5.16:

If you know you need to build a specific branch based on a specific recommendation, use:

With fio-utils installed and passing a single device through to a VM you should see someting similair to the following...:

Where dmesg contains the actual driver version tag of the running driver

The support and maintenance of this driver is made possible by the people that actively contribute or contributed to its code base or by supporting the project in other ways.

Obviously all the regulars on the Discord channel, notably @bplein, @AcquaCow and @Tear.

Oh yes and the folks that were at Fusion IO for creating this product that was way ahead of its time and delivering the integration shim sources with the driver core.

Tools and resources often used to figure out what changed, and why things are not working as they are supposed to.

Installing the fio-util, fio-common, fio-preinstall and fio-sysvinit are recommended. When moving from source 2.3.11 to source 3.2.10 the firmware HAS TO BE UPDATED to 3.2.10.20150212. For the move to 3.2.15, and 3.2.16 from 3.2.10 we've not seen any issues.

Though the newer the firmware often the better. If your card is not supported with the latest firmware drop by the Discord channel and someone might be able to help you.