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e1000 fails to load sometimes: The EEPROM Checksum Is Not Valid

DISCUSSION Auke Kok 2 participants 6 messages Jul 13, 2006

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Auke Kok

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#0 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines

With 2.6.17-rc5-mm2 (and other kernels), the e1000 fails to load sometimes, with the message:

Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 7.0.38-k4-NAPI Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Intel Corporation.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:00.0 to 64
e1000: 0000:02:00.0: e1000_probe: The EEPROM Checksum Is Not Valid
e1000: probe of 0000:02:00.0 failed with error -5

Quoted 2 lines

Sometimes it will do this after several modprobe/rmmod cycles, and then it will load OK. Once loaded, it seems to work perfectly.

Sorry for the long wait, there's some new information on this that just this morning arrived.

We received reports from SuSE that on a T60 they were seeing the same problem. After obtaining a T60 ourselves we managed to spot the suspected problem: it is related to the "smart power down" capability of the PHY. Lenovo had this feature turned on in certain BIOS'es which caused the EEPROM reads to fail.

Some people reported that the problem goes away when you plug in a cable - this guarantees that the PHY is turned on and probably masks the issue for a lot of people (either you work plugged in or forget about the NIC when you work wireless, thus not seeing the issue).

The latest EEPROM's from Lenovo (obtainable from their websites as .iso) seem to have this feature turned off, which resolves the issue.

We're right now working on seeing if we can find a workaround for the issue ourselves in the driver, but in any case you can always try to grab the latest BIOS from lenovo's website, and tell us if that works for you.

meanwhile we're working on a more permanent solution.

Cheers,

Auke

Refs:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1474679&group_id=42302&atid=447449
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-476305-highlight-e1000.html

#1 lore raw
Quoted 1 line · Auke Kok

Sorry for the long wait, there's some new information on this that just this morning arrived.

Thanks for the update.

Quoted 1 line

The latest EEPROM's from Lenovo (obtainable from their websites as .iso) seem to have this feature turned off, which resolves the issue.

Do you have a specific link to this update? I can't see anything obvious on their site relating to this.

Thanks,
J

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#2 lore raw
Quoted 7 lines · Jeremy Fitzhardinge
Quoted 1 line · Auke Kok

Sorry for the long wait, there's some new information on this that just this morning arrived.

Thanks for the update.

Quoted 1 line

The latest EEPROM's from Lenovo (obtainable from their websites as .iso) seem to have this feature turned off, which resolves the issue.

Do you have a specific link to this update? I can't see anything obvious on their site relating to this.

See:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-63027

links to the latest .iso image.

Note: I haven't tried the 1.07 update myself. I had to *downgrade* our test system to actually expose the bug.

Cheers,

Auke

author
#4 lore raw
Quoted 9 lines · Jeremy Fitzhardinge
Quoted 7 lines · Auke Kok

See:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-63027

links to the latest .iso image.

Note: I haven't tried the 1.07 update myself. I had to *downgrade* our test system to actually expose the bug.

This appears to be a link to the T60 1.06 update. Do you know if they're planning an X60 update too?

x60 bios upgrade 1.06 is here: (found by typing "x60 bios" in the search bar on the same website)

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/license.do?filename=mobiles/7buj04uc.iso

unfortunately the changelog for this BIOS upgrade doesn't tell us much if the DSPD feature was affected or not. I also have not tried this one either.

Cheers,

Auke

#5 lore raw
Quoted 6 lines · Auke Kok

x60 bios upgrade 1.06 is here: (found by typing "x60 bios" in the search bar on the same website)

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/license.do?filename=mobiles/7buj04uc.iso

unfortunately the changelog for this BIOS upgrade doesn't tell us much if the DSPD feature was affected or not. I also have not tried this one either.

I've been running 1.06 for a while, and I haven't seen this problem in a while, but I can't say if those two observations are correlated.

J