Intel 82579V NIC problem - kernel regression?

Question

Hi all,
I recently upgraded my desktop motherboard to an Asus Maximus GENE-IV, which has the Intel 82579V Gigabit NIC. I installed arch the usual way, dd-ing the latest install image onto a USB stick, and what have you. Trouble is, as soon as I upgrade the kernel and reboot, my NIC stops working in a peculiar manner. It will come up after I do 'sudo ip link set eth0 up', and acquire a carrier. Then, after about ten seconds, the carrier drops. Then it'll come back up again... and drop again. Over, and over, and over. This does not happen with kernel 3.0.3, which is the kernel installed by the latest install image, but it happens with every kernel from 3.0.7 onward (3.0.7 is the oldest kernel I have available to test with, from /var/cache/pacman/pkg on another machine). The most frustrating thing is that I've been googling the problem for two days now, and I can't find anyone who has quite the same issue
The driver is e1000e, and it's autoloaded. My system is an x86_64 one. Has anyone experienced this themselves or heard of it anywhere else? I'd like to avoid manually building the intel driver sources if it's at all possible, because it works fine with an old kernel. /frustration
Edit: dmesg is flooded with "e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up" messages.
Edit: further weirdness: when I set a static IP on boot from rc.conf, the interface stays up, but I can only see machines on my local network - DNS does not work, even after putting a nameserver entry into resolv.conf and rebooting.
Edit: I did a clean install, marked the linux kernel as a package not to be upgraded, and did a pacman -Syu. Even with the old 3.0.3 kernel, after the update, my NIC is broken in exactly the same way. I'm really stumped on this!
Last edited by andrew-wja (2012-01-10 21:21:29)

Answer 1

Works fine here, same driver, static IP though.
$ uname -a
Linux amalthea 3.1.8-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jan 7 08:03:08 UTC 2012 i686 Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU G530 @ 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
$ lspci|grep Ethernet
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579V Gigabit Network Connection (rev 05)
$ lspci -nn|grep 00:19.0
00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82579V Gigabit Network Connection [8086:1503] (rev 05)
$ dmesg|grep e1000e
[ 3.965629] e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 1.4.4-k
[ 3.965632] e1000e: Copyright(c) 1999 - 2011 Intel Corporation.
[ 3.965664] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
[ 3.965673] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: setting latency timer to 64
[ 3.965772] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 4.271943] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: (PCI Express:2.5GT/s:Width x1) xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
[ 4.271946] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection
[ 4.271980] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: MAC: 10, PHY: 11, PBA No: FFFFFF-0FF
[ 7.196733] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 7.248933] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 10.186878] e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 1000 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: Rx/Tx
Last edited by .:B:. (2012-01-09 21:24:59)