Thank you, Talat.
At the time, the Linux admin guys werwe traveling and did not have
access to HPE contact info. I tried contacting NonStop support (which I
deal with all the time) but they of course didn't support the PC. But
nobody could get me any contact info and it was well hidden online.
Eventually I found a US number and after a long search she gave me a
German number, but of course they wee closed for the weekend by then.
HPE's support web site would not accept any of the part numbers of
serial numebrs that I had. Mellanox's support site did not list the HPE
part numbers - it looked like HPE had different part numbers from
Mellanox cards. I also could not find any instructions on firmware
upgrade, nor if we would be able to perform the upgrade while running
RHEL 7.3. I also figured that Mellanox would not provide any direct
support since we were an HPE customer. I don't have a lot of use for
"OEM" arrangements where the OEM doesn't add any value or change
anything, but merely insinuates iteself between the end user and the
actual manufacturer - what I call "value subtracted" or
"lose-lose-lose".
We werew able to backboot to RHEL 7.1 kernel so I could continue with IB
work over the weekend. This morning (European time) the Linux admin
noticed that RedHat support has a typo in the version number. He was
able to get the required firmware from HPE website and reflash (I don't
know the details) the HPE/Mellanox card. The Mellanox works on RHEL 7.3
now. We still have a problem with LD_PRELOAD libvma, which was the
reason for 7.3 upgrade, but we just reported that to RedHat support
(which is really first rate).
So, tempest in a teapot. Unfortunately came at the worst possible time
when everyone - including this forum - was offline for the weekend.