Re: Serious e1000e driver issue on Intrepid

Re: Serious e1000e driver issue on Intrepid

[Daniel J Blueman]

Hi Tim,

[cross-posting to LKML]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Tim Gardner <tim.gardner@canonical.com> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> There are beginning to be an increasing number of reports regarding a
> serious regression in Intrepid with regard to the e1000e ethernet driver
> wherein it can be rendered permanently inoperable. The original Bugzilla
> report is here:
>
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11382
>
> SuSE has also made an announcement regarding this issue:
>
> http://news.opensuse.org/2008/09/22/serious-e1000e-driver-issue-in-sle-11-beta-1-and-opensuse-111-beta-1
>
> Given the severity of this issue, I'm inclined to blacklist the driver
> by default in modutils until such time as Intel develops a fix.
>
> How do we inform users when their ethernet suddenly stops working after
> an update?

The 2.6.27-rc7 changelog shows this problem has been fixed for e1000:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/ChangeLog-2.6.27-rc7

and this patch in the -mm series fixes it for e1000e:
http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm-commits&m=122038324200305&w=2

Clearly, we need to ensure the second patch makes it into 2.6.27
final; the corruption is reported to occur during suspend/resume
cycles.

Thanks,
  Daniel
-- 
Daniel J Blueman

Re: Serious e1000e driver issue on Intrepid

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Tuesday, 23 of September 2008, Daniel J Blueman wrote:
> Hi Tim,
> 
> [cross-posting to LKML]
> 
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Tim Gardner <tim.gardner@canonical.com> wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > There are beginning to be an increasing number of reports regarding a
> > serious regression in Intrepid with regard to the e1000e ethernet driver
> > wherein it can be rendered permanently inoperable. The original Bugzilla
> > report is here:
> >
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11382
> >
> > SuSE has also made an announcement regarding this issue:
> >
> > http://news.opensuse.org/2008/09/22/serious-e1000e-driver-issue-in-sle-11-beta-1-and-opensuse-111-beta-1
> >
> > Given the severity of this issue, I'm inclined to blacklist the driver
> > by default in modutils until such time as Intel develops a fix.
> >
> > How do we inform users when their ethernet suddenly stops working after
> > an update?
> 
> The 2.6.27-rc7 changelog shows this problem has been fixed for e1000:
> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/ChangeLog-2.6.27-rc7
> 
> and this patch in the -mm series fixes it for e1000e:
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm-commits&m=122038324200305&w=2

Well, actually this patch is against e1000, not e1000e and it's been merged
already.  Apparently, a separate fix for e1000e is necessary.

Thanks,
Rafael