Serious e1000e driver issue on Intrepid

[Leann Ogasawara]

Hi Everyone,

Since the Bugsquad has a great deal of interaction with bug reporters I
wanted to share the following information with you regarding the e1000e
driver issue that's been reported both upstream and in Launchpad [1,2].
If you come across any Launchpad bug reports which could suffer from
this bug, please inform the bug reporter/subscribers of the situation
[3].  I'll paste the Launchpad bug description below:

"In some circumstances it appears possible for the 2.6.27-rc kernels to
corrupt the NVRAM used by some Intel network parts to store data such as
MAC addresses.  This is limited to the new e1000e driver, and reports
have only appeared from users of "82566 and 82567 based LAN parts (ich8
and ich9)" (to quote Intel). The reports seem to be isolated to laptops,
but it is not clear if this is because desktop/server parts are not
vulnerable, or if use cases simply increase the chances of laptop users
being hit.

Once this corruption has occurred, recovery may be possible via a BIOS
update, but may well require replacement of the hardware. Use of Intel's
IABUTIL.EXE is strongly discouraged, as it will worsen the problem to
the point where the network part will no longer appear on the PCI bus."

Both Intel and the Ubuntu kernel team are actively addressing this
issue.  The kernel team will also be providing an updated kernel with
this e1000e driver removed until a fix is incorporated.  Precautionary
notices are also being posted [4].

bdmuarry and myself have additionally grepped existing kernel bug
reports searching for comments, descriptions, and attachments (ie lspci
output) containing "e1000e", "82566", or "82567" and have notified the
bug reporter/subscribers of the issue.  If you come across a new bug
report or one that we may have missed, please pass along this
information.

Thanks,
Leann

[1] https://http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11382
[2] bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/263555
[3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/221164/comments/7
[4] http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha6