# e1000e drops connection -- SOLVED

## mroconnor

Ok not sure if this is related to the e1000e bug or not but here is what happens:

I boot up my Thinkpad w500 and I can browse with lynx, do an emerge --sync and maybe download some stuff but all of the sudden it stops. If I am emerging something I get name resolution errors. Today just to test something else I fired up lynx and started to pull the LiveCD from one of the Gentoo mirrors, I got about 16MB down and it just stopped. 

Things I try to do to fix it:

restart net.eth0 -- hardly ever works.

dhcpcd -k eth0 && dhcpcd eth0 --hardly ever works

be patient and wait -- some hours later it might work again.

reboot -- always works but only for about 5-10 minutes.

Currently using 2.6.27-gentoo-r7, would like to go back to zen-sources but git clone dies after 3%. GRRRRRRRRRRR.

Is my NIC hosed? Is there something I can do? HELP! please.Last edited by mroconnor on Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:33 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## keet

It sounds like you recently upgraded your kernel.   I found a thread here reporting severe problems related to the 2.6.27rc1 kernel and the e1001.  Whether this applies to future versions, I know not... but maybe you should immediately discontinue use of this kernel, in any way possible, since from I read, it can brick your adapter and maybe damage other things, too.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but it's good to be careful.

[Edit] Yeah, sorry, here's the thread, by the way:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21154685-Warning-to-Intel-e1000e-owners

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## keet

Just a bit of advice, always keep spare copies of previous kernels in your boot partition.  Only after using 2.6.26-r4 for a few weeks and finding it stable, and having now upgraded to 2.6.27-r7, did I finally delete my old 2.6.25-r7 kernel.  Now I'm thinking that I should have just deleted the entry from my grub.conf file, but oh well..

This way, if anything seems drastically wrong, and you don't feel like tweaking, or suspect that a new kernel is damaging your system, you can just boot with a previous kernel.

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## mroconnor

This is really killing me as it make it makes it impossible to use the laptop. Does anyone know of a way to fix this? I can receive 10-15Mb on the card then it shutsdown. I am using a 2.6.28 kernel have upgraded the BIOS on the laptop but nothing has worked. I am DESPERATE for a fix now.

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## keet

I would stop using the network card at all.  Download the source code for a previous gentoo kernel (maybe on another computer, and copy it to a USB drive or something), copy it to your /usr/portage/distfiles , and emerge it without any network connection.  Then configure and compile your "new" older kernel.

Or do you already have a previous copy of the Gentoo/Linux kernel on your computer?  Try:

```
 eselect kernel list 
```

to see which kernels you have available.  Hopefully one of the older ones will work better with your network card.  Maybe you should revert to your zen kernel  :Smile: 

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## mroconnor

I am currently using a Zen 2.6.28 kernel with the same issues. I have about a million of these:

```
cat /var/log/messages

an  6 14:32:28 cosmo2 [  761.701725] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang:

Jan  6 14:32:30 cosmo2 [  763.701339] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang:

Jan  6 14:32:32 cosmo2 [  765.701268] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang:

Jan  6 14:32:34 cosmo2 [  767.701184] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang:

Jan  6 14:32:40 cosmo2 [  773.704853] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang:

Jan  6 14:32:42 cosmo2 [  775.704400] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang:

Jan  6 14:32:44 cosmo2 [  777.704279] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang:

Jan  6 14:32:46 cosmo2 [  779.704221] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang:

```

I think the card itself is hosed.

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## mroconnor

I was worng it was 'CONFIG_PCI_MSI' in the kernel. I disabled it and I am good to go now. I think it was Thinkpad specific but I could be wrong.

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