This page last modified: Jun 30 2004
title:Intel Pro 1000MT NIC in Dell Poweredge 700 server description:Fedora Core 1 has bad drivers for the Intel Pro 1000 series ethernet on Dell Poweredge 700 servers keywords:nic,network,ethernet,embedded,onboard,motherboard,builtin,built in,intel,pro,poweredge,700,driver,fail,failure,dell,power,edge,led The Intel 1000MT nic embedded (onboard) on the motherboard does not activate until it has a valid driver. The driver that comes with Fedora core 1 is bad. Loading the e1000 driver from Fedora fails with a message to the effect that no device can be found. Failure to load the driver means that the leds don't light on the onboard NIC. The PCI NICs leds will light as expected after the machine post/bios load if you plug in a good cable to a good ethernet connection. Get the latest driver from Intel. The driver we are using is version 5.2.39. I think the file name as downloaded from Intel's web site was e1000-52.tar. The gzipped tar file we used to build the rpm is on our server: <a href="http://tull.achs.virginia.edu/~twl8n/readme_files/e1000-5.2.39.tar.gz">e1000-5.2.39.tar.gz</a> You'll need the kernel source and gcc32 from disk 3 of the Fedora install. I copied them from the CD, and used rpm to install. We also recommend that you create an rpm of the e1000 driver, and use rpm to install it. This will probably keep yum from overwriting your good driver with an older version. Keep in mind that the "good" driver may not work with the next kernel update. In that case just rebuild the driver. I did all this logged in as root. We gzipped and renamed the Intel tar file to: e1000-5.2.39.tar.gz Then we simply: rpmbuild -tb e1000-5.2.39.tar.gz Near the end of all the output is a note that the new rpms have been written to some Redhat standard directory. I copied them from that directory (the full path of which I can never remember) to /root.