intel 82571 ethernet driver

Moriah · Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 12:22 am Post subject: intel 82571 ethernet driver

I just bought a bunch of dual 1000bT ethernet cards that say they use the intel 82571 chip.

I can boot with the install USB stick and get the cards to work, but when I go into makemenuconfig to modify my kernel, I see e1000e as a listed driver that is already selected as part of the kernel. This install usb stick shows e1000e as a module. Do I have to make this a module to get it to work?

I am not sure whether the motherboard ethernet port uses e1000e or e1000, but the new card has 2 ethernet ports, plus I have the motherboard port. I am starting to think that I need to make e1000e a module to get it to work on multiple ports.

When I boot my gentoo system and do ifconfig -a, I see all 3 ports. I can even set the ip address of the 2 new ports, but they don't ping from another machine even though they do ping locally from the same machine they are installed on.

Weird!

So is my guess about modules correct, or am I doing something else wrong?

If I need to make e1000e a module, then I need to force it to load on boot, since this is a headless machine.

I have 5 identical machines with identical kernels. Only the ip address and hostname is different. They all need to have this dual ether net card installed in addition to the motherboard ethernet port.

pietinger · Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:56 am Post subject: Re: intel 82571 ethernet driver

Moriah,

it is not necessary to change your kernel config and make e1000e as module. This module is able to support more than one card. Ask for lspci -k and watch how many lines you have with "Kernel driver in use: pcieport" ;-)

There is only one difference whether you build a kernel module as module or static into the kernel: IF this driver needs firmware. THEN you have a different behaviour (see more here:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pietinger/Tutorials/Manual_kernel_configuration#Driver_needs_Firmware )

If you cannot ping this new ports you probably have a problem with your network settings. For this we would need more informations (e.g. do you use netifrc or networkmanager; settings ...).

Moriah · Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 3:44 pm Post subject:

It was working ok all along. I just did not understand how to get the default route set up properly when there was more than 1 ethernet port on the machine in the same cidr block. My misunderstanding. Everything works fine now.
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