Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 [LWN.net]

From:		"Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier" <jzb-AT-zonker.net>
To:		opensuse-announce-AT-opensuse.org
Subject:		[opensuse-announce] Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1
Date:		Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:49:47 -0400
Message-ID:		<81d32afc0809221249h7cf93a65y208a5167efd0a8f2@mail.gmail.com>

We have an important announcement regarding openSUSE 11.1 beta 1 and
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 beta 1:

The Intel e1000e driver on openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 and SUSE Linux
Enterprise 11 Beta 1 might have a serious issue with the potential to
damage the network card in a way that it cannot be used any longer.

Intel and Novell are currently working to analyze and solve the issue.

For the time being:

Please do NOT USE:

openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1
or
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Beta 1

on systems with Intel e1000e hardware.

Any other hardware, including systems with Intel e1000 (without -e)
network cards, is not affected by this issue.

We will keep you posted. Please watch news.opensuse.org and the
opensuse-announce mailing list for more information.
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
openSUSE Community Manager
jzb@zonker.net
http://zonker.opensuse.org/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/
-- 
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Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1

Posted Sep 22, 2008 21:09 UTC (Mon) by abatters (subscriber, #6932) [Link]

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11382

so it's not just SUSE?

Posted Sep 22, 2008 22:21 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Seems e1000e owners should avoid 2.6.27-rc1, right?

Seems current 2.6.27-rc* is effected

Posted Sep 23, 2008 3:04 UTC (Tue) by wtogami (subscriber, #32325) [Link]

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=459202
It effects Fedora rawhide too. This has been added as a blocker for F10 Beta. (Although Beta was already delayed due to installer problems.)

Jesse Brandeburg at Intel's warning seems pretty important:
> Please DO NOT run ibautil as some sites on the web suggest to try to fix
> this issue. It will likely cause you to have to replace your motherboard
> to get LAN functionality back.

Ubuntu Intrepid alphas as well

Posted Sep 23, 2008 5:25 UTC (Tue) by tallcedars (guest, #49434) [Link]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/263555

Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1

Posted Sep 23, 2008 13:43 UTC (Tue) by HappyCamp (subscriber, #29230) [Link]

Supposedly this is due to a bug in the GFX driver, that when it panics it will overwrite non-volatile memory of the network card (e1000e) which then kills the network card. It may also be over-writing other non-volatile memory of other things, but the network card is where you notice it first.

The network card can be restored with a BIOS update, though you may have to reset the MAC address if it gets wiped out too.

Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1

Posted Sep 23, 2008 16:28 UTC (Tue) by ssam (subscriber, #46587) [Link]

is there a simple way to tell if your network card is vulnerable?

i have a 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) according to lshw. googleing finds http://hardware4linux.info/component/13943/ which says it can use both e1000 and e1000e. lshw says that it is using e1000 (with kernel 2.6.24).

http://lwn.net/Articles/278016/ says that at some point card that work with both drivers will be switched to e1000e.

i guess i should not even try booting a 2.6.27 kernel to find out.

Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1

Posted Sep 23, 2008 20:08 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

If you dump the eeprom to a file with 'ethtool -e ethX > ...' (with
obvious replacements) then you... are still stuck, but less stuck, because
at least you have the eeprom's original contents so that *someone* can try
to get it back onto the card.

Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1

Posted Sep 24, 2008 5:27 UTC (Wed) by aj (subscriber, #39001) [Link]

AFAIK the current theory is that it only happens on Laptops where the EEPROM is part of the NVRAM - and that it gets destroyed by another driver during a crash/OOPS, e.g. the graphics driver. But to confirm this, we need to reproduce it first.

But today there's AFAIK nothing concrete enough that I can tell you whether a system is affected or not. I suggest to save the eeprom as others commented.

Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1

Posted Sep 24, 2008 8:13 UTC (Wed) by aj (subscriber, #39001) [Link]

I have to correct myself: It might happen with non-Laptops as well (happened with machine with onboard e1000).