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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Intel 82573 NIC

Milan Budimirovic wrote:
: Has anyone else had trouble with this particular ethernet controller?

Nothing obvious springs to mind, no.  Which revision of the controller are
you using?  There's at least E, V, and L.

: I managed to get it working (sort of) on Ubuntu 9.04, but it took a bit 
: of work. The device driver does not work out of the box on the install 
: CD. Once you upgrade the kernel it works with DHCP, but not if you try 
: to assign it a static IP address (figure that one out). I managed to 
: work around the problem by using DHCP and assigning a static IP to the 
: controller's MAC address on the DHCP server. :P

This is actually how I run my entire home network.  It makes
re-configuration of network parameters (re-IP-ing, NTP servers, WINS
servers, etc.) much easier.  Of course, that's not really helping solve the
root problem.

: I'm a little cheesed right now because (a) Tyan put cheapoid ethernet 
: controllers on an otherwise excellent mainboard, and (b) the driver 
: seems to work on some versions of the kernel and not others.

I'm glad to meet another Tyan user!  Their motherboards are generally fairly
good, so I'm also surprised that they've chosen the 82573 -- which board is
it?

It looks like drivers for Linux have been around since 2.6.16, and I'm
pretty sure Ubuntu 9.04 is well beyond that.  Have you tried upgrading to
the latest firmware?  Tyan does have a nasty habit of shipping boards with
firmware revisions that are fairly old; I recently purchased an S2932 with a
firmware from 2006, so the CPUs I bought aren't detected.

Aside from firmware updates, what actually happens when you try to assign a
static address?  Kernel panic, address gets assigned with no network
responsiveness, ifconfig error, watchdog timeouts...?

Likely unrelated, it looks like the FreeBSD folks ran into an issue with the
NIC PROM a while back[1].  There is apparently a fix[2], but the site has
been down at least all weekend, if not longer.  Given that this was FreeBSD,
it's not likely to be related to your issue.

On a parting note, you're not the only one with 82573 problems in Ubuntu.
Which driver are you using?  I believe (and I could very well be wrong)
there are two different drivers in the tree that may work with the 82573:
e1000, and e1000e.  Additionally, which kernel are you using?  I'm assuming
2.6.30 at this point?

[1] http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/stable/2006-10/msg00754.html
[2] http://www.higherorder.com.au/2007/6/25/intel_82573_patch

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