Building NDCTL Utilities from Source: A Comprehensive Guide

Building NDCTL with Meson on Ubuntu 24.04

The NDCTL package includes the cxl, daxctl, and ndctl utilities. It uses the Meson build system for streamlined compilation. This guide reflects the modern build process for managing NVDIMMs, CXL, and PMEM on Ubuntu 24.04.

If you do not install a more recent Kernel than the one provided by the distro, then it is not recommended to compile these utilities from source code. If you have installed a mainline Kernel, then you will likely require a newer version of these utilities that are compatible with your Kernel. See the NDCTL Releases as the Kernel support information is provided there.

Here is the support matrix as of ndctl Version 81 and Kernel 6.14:

Prerequisites

Use the following steps to install the prerequisite packages before we start the build and compile phase.

1. System Update:

   sudo  apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
   

2. Core Build Tools:

   sudo  apt install -y git meson ninja-build pkg-config automake autoconf
   

3. Libraries and Tools:

   sudo  apt install -y  asciidoc asciidoctor ruby-asciidoctor xmlto libtool  libkmod-dev libsystemd-dev libudev0 libudev-dev uuid-dev libjson-c-dev libkeyutils-dev libinih-dev bash-completion keyutils libkeyutils-dev libiniparser-dev libtraceevent-dev libtracefs-dev
   

Step 1: Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/pmem/ndctl.git && cd ndctl

Step 2: Configure with Meson

Create a build directory and configure:

meson setup build

Step 3: Compile the Code

Build using Ninja (Meson’s backend):

meson compile -C build

Step 4: Install Binaries (Optional)

sudo meson install -C build

If you choose not to install the binaries, the individual commands can be found in the ndctl/build/<cmd> directory, ie:

• cxl: ~/ndctl/build/cxl/cxl
• ndctl: ~/ndctl/build/ndctl/ndctl
• daxctl: ~/ndctl/build/daxctl/daxctl

Step 5: Verify Installation

cxl --version

Troubleshooting

Build Errors:

Should you encounter any issues during the configure or build processes, you clean and rebuild using rm -rf build && meson setup build.