Probable e1000e corruption culprit found (and 2.6.27.1 released)

Hardware simply should not be permanently disabled simply by writing to some random register. Remember, this didn't cause the device to send out corrupted data. Simply writing into the NVM caused the card to turn into a brick.

The issue with the cmpxchg, is that it will always write data, even if the data it finds did not match. It still performs a write. It will write back the same data it read if the compare fails. By performing the cmpxchg in the IO address, it did not matter what it read. It would corrupt the data it found.

The fact that the old workaround was to make the NVM read only, was not just a work around for this bug. But a proper fix to the driver code as well. This will keep any other random bugs from bricking the card.

As for the CONFIG_SHARED_IOREMAP_SPACE, I don't think that is needed. That may have protected the bug with ftrace, but it does not protect other bugs writing into bad memory areas.