Thinkpads Forum

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.

It seems the e1000e driver in 2.6.27-rc can corrupt the eeprom of these cards, killing the hardware.

frankausmtank wrote:Thanks for posting this, I was just about to start a similar thread.
It seems this is an issue with all distros using 2.6.27rc, including the current alphas of Ubuntu 8.10.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/263555

edit:
under which circumstances will e1000e be loaded? So, which thinkpads (if any) are at risk, and when?
I always had just the e1000 module loaded (on 2.6.24), however, after a quick search on the net for "thinkpad e1000e" it seems that the e1000e module gets loaded sometimes on certain models, but I'm still not that sure about it.

another edit: thanks for the sticky.

tarvoke wrote:canonical (and heads of other distros) need to take some responsibility here. alpha/beta release, sure I understand it may trash my filesystem or make fun of my dog or something; but not trash hardware.

putting up warnings on the download page but not pulling the images is not cool. probably almost half of new laptops shipped use integrated intel pci-e nic. a lot of people get images from bittorrent and won't even see the download page / warning. sorry for the rant, this just really burns me up.

Anne wrote:Hi

As written in copied mail above, we decided to move to kernel 2.6.27 for Mandriva Linux 2009. This is a big decision and needed lots of tests and discussions.

This was a hard one because we are late in planning and this kind of change can have lots of consequences. Because of maintainance issues and hardware support progress in last kernel, kernel team decided to do the jump.

If some blocking issues are discovered, we will switch back to 2.6.26 kernel.

In order to make this change in safe conditions, we need to get the largest tests on largest range of hardware configurations. You can now test it from Cooker then through coming RC1 release.

Thanks for advance for this

Cheers

===================================================================

The announcement on Cooker:

Hi,

Today kernel 2.6.27-rc5 is arriving in cooker.

It seems a bit too bleeding edge for the state we are in now of the distro,
but after some internal discussion we decided to go with it. We hope that it
enhances users experience of 2009.0, with better support in general (like
with wireless and other new hardware now supported by 2.6.27) and less
issues. Also it will makes things easier in the maintenance area, with less
backports needed (unlike the case with 2.6.26), and considering that 2009.0
can be the base of next corporate version of the distro, a most up to date
kernel easies things a bit.

We made many tests considering the stage now of 2009.0, with rc1 release going
to happen next week, but please report especially any regressions you see
compared with previous 2.6.26 package releases. Until now we didn't found
anything critical that could hold the update to 2.6.27, but if something very
bad not detected yet happens we will revert back to 2.6.26.

Just a note about 2.6.27-rc5: on LKML it was reported a boot issue when using
ahci (http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/8/29/304), as can be seen on the thread there
is already a fix for it, we will release later updated packages, just a warn
for ahci users that you may want to wait a bit before using the new kernel.

--
[]'s
Herton
_________________
Mandriva engineering director

awilliamson wrote:This bug is known to be present in all current 2.6.27 pre-release kernels.

The issue potentially affects all current Mandriva Linux 2009 pre-releases (earlier pre-releases came with a 2.6.26 kernel, but if you installed one and updated regularly, you would be automatically updated to a 2.6.27 kernel). It will not affect Mandriva Linux 2009 RC2, which will be released soon with a kernel that works around the issue. The issue will not be present in the final release of Mandriva Linux 2009. It does not affect any Mandriva Linux stable release (including 2008 Spring) unless you are using a non-official kernel. If you are using any current Mandriva Linux 2009 pre-release, we highly recommend you check whether this issue may affect you.
<snip>
We recommend you then immediately switch to an unaffected kernel. Cooker kernels from version 2.6.27-0.rc7.1.1mnb work around the problem by disabling the driver; this will prevent your network interface from working, but will also ensure it is not affected by this issue. Kernel 2.6.27-0.rc7.1.1mnb will be available in the Cooker repositories on September 24th.

WARNING

Due to an unresolved bug in the Linux kernel included in Alpha 6, it should not be used on Intel ethernet hardware handled by the e1000e driver (Intel GigE). Doing so may render your network hardware permanently inoperable.

Older Intel ethernet hardware which uses the e1000 driver is not affected by this; however, some hardware which used the e1000 driver in previous Ubuntu releases, such as hardware that uses a PCI Express bus, has been moved from e1000 to e1000e in the latest kernel releases. If in doubt, do not use Alpha 6, and subscribe to https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/263555 to be notified when the bug is fixed in the daily images.