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Linux Intel PRO/1000 GB Ethernet Controller

Back to the server that was sitting on my desk… The Debian Lenny installation did not seem to recognize the Intel Pro/1000 10/100/1000 server Ethernet cards, dual port, PCI-E x4.

I ran: # lspci | grep Ethernet to list the pci devices (duh :P ). This gave me the following output:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Device 10c9 (rev 01)
03:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Device 10c9 (rev 01)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Device 10c9 (rev 01)
04:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Device 10c9 (rev 01)
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection

The last two are the on board Ethernet controllers that work fine using the e1000e driver. The ones that I really wanted working were the first 4 items displayed as “Device 10c9 (rev 01)”. I couldn’t find anything on the internet other than a German post, which looked like the guy was having the same problem (I can’t decipher German). So I started trying out some different Intel drivers.

I first tried the standard e1000 driver as I noticed even some PCI express cards used this driver. That didn’t work. Then on my second shot I tried out this one “igb-1.2.44.9.tar.gz”. I’m assuming “igb” stands for Intel Gigabit, which makes sense as that’s what those cards are. If you don’t have the Intel driver disc that came with your cards you can find this driver here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=13663&lang=eng

To install this driver just do the following:

# tar xfv igb-1.2.44.9.tar.gz
# cd igb-1.2.44.9/src
# make
# make install
# modprobe igb

As soon as I executed “modprobe igb” I instantly had 4 new eth interfaces! You might want to add “igb” to /etc/modules, which is where you can also supply some parameters for the driver.

Hopefully this post will help out anyone else who is having trouble with these cards on Debian.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Debian GNU/Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Linux Intel PRO/1000 GB Ethernet Controller”

  1. Rod says:
    November 20, 2009 at 2:33 am

    Thanks for your help ! Network is working now ;)

  2. devnull says:
    December 16, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    Great, great thanks!
    My 4 port GE-Card is now online without loosing much time – thanks to google and you!

  3. Morten says:
    January 6, 2010 at 5:02 am

    Thanks! Also saved me some time.

  4. David Wende says:
    June 24, 2010 at 5:35 am

    We have two Intel Controllers connected;
    82573 and 82574L on a Linux system.
    We have a problem in that only the first (82573) is recognized by
    the driver e1000e version 1.1.19.
    I noticed that you are also using two devices with the same driver –
    did you ever have any problems with these two?
    Thanks

  5. Brandon Yuille says:
    June 27, 2010 at 4:57 pm

    Hi David,

    If I’m understanding you correctly, your problem is the same problem I was having. As I sorted out in the post above, the solution for the 82574L cards is to use the “igb” driver.

    I hope that helps to clarify.

    By the way when I do lsmod, you’ll see that I have both drivers loaded:

    e1000e 105000 0
    igb 74628 0

    Brandon

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