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e1000e Bug Squashed — Linux Kernel Patch Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the good-news-everyone dept.

ruphus13 writes "As mentioned earlier, there was a kernel bug in the alpha/beta version of the Linux kernel (up to 2.6.27 rc7), which was corrupting (and rendering useless) the EEPROM/NVM of adapters. Thankfully, a patch is now out that prevents writing to the EEPROM once the driver is loaded, and this follows a patch released by Intel earlier in the week. From the article: 'The Intel team is currently working on narrowing down the details of how and why these chipsets were affected. They also plan on releasing patches shortly to restore the EEPROM on any adapters that have been affected, via saved images using ethtool -e or from identical systems.' This is good news as we move towards a production release!"

1 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Re:News? by SL+Baur · · Score: 5, Informative

    An alpha/beta of the most recent linux kernel patch had a bug fixed, and it hits the front page?

    They have not fixed the bug that caused the e1000e ethernet cards to get bricked. This is at least a two part bug. The EEPROM should not have been writable and Something Is Happening to cause bad writes to happen. What that "Something" is, no one knows yet, though it appears they are getting close.

    Linus is an absolute, total anal retentive with regards to fixing bugs by understanding and fixing the root cause[1], not just papering over it. This papers over it for the moment, because the bug hasn't been isolated yet, but it allows more people to participate because the side effects were really nasty - this was a true bricking of the ethernet card.

    This stage isn't newsworthy for Slashdot.[2] It must be a slow news day.

    [1] This is a Good Thing.

    [2] Nor will the real bug fix when it comes. A bug is found, a bug is fixed. Life, goes on.