e1000e driver

English Hardware
1

Folks,

I’m having trouble with an e1000e driver in opensuse 11.1 64-bit
Basically I have an Aberdeen (Linux journal ultimate Linux server) It’s actually a terabuster x419.
It seems you get what you pay for.

Anyhow. The Intel 82753L quad nic onboard does not work. Not that this is a surprise since intel nics have always been the largest headache in Linux historically.

I can get the drivers to load but cannot ping (some servers)
once in a while I can ping one. I know that both machines are pingable. Same version of suse on many other machines which work great.

Basically,
I have mdmns off in the /etc/host.conf.
static ip on a class “C” netmask.
default route is correct.
firewall turned off.
dns in etc resolv.conf is correct.
changed /etc/nsswitch.conf to “hosts: dns files”

tcpdump shows me some icmp packets on a ping going out. Some comming back. Ping however fails.

The ping shows :
PING 192.9.200.98 (192.9.200.98) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.9.200.6: icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.9.200.6 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable

The nics do not get dhcp either.

Anyway to get this Nic to work with opensuse?
Right now its a $6,000.00 boat anchor.

2

Hmmm… I remember there were some problems with this driver and some network hardware around the time openSUSE 11.1 was still in beta. Anyway, I found this thread discussing a persistent issue even after patch was released. It was suggested to contact one of the kernel developers. Maybe it would be a good idea to take the same approach?

Linux Kernel Mailing List
<linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>

e1000 developers list
<e1000-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>

Karsten Keil (openSUSE Kernel Developer)
<kkeil@suse.de>

Relevant command info:

uname -r
/sbin/lspci
/lspci -n

3

Thanks I saw that but the developer email is no good.

I found that the driver work but must be plugged into a switch and live during install which it also only sees the network on eth1 (no matter which of the four eth ports you have plugged in.)

Wierd huh?

Anyway it’s very reproducable.

It always detects as eth1. Then everything works fine.

If not plugged in during install or you try to finagle the device name etc… it just breaks.

Unplug eth1 and plug into another port and try em. No dice until you at least activate the eth1 again.

Why? Makes no sense to me.