Problems with Big Sur (macinabox) VM and Intel i210 network card after upgrading to 11.4

[IronRooster]

Hi! I have a macinabox based Big Sur install that I've customized to use a pci-e graphics card (Radeon Vega64), an nvme drive for the OS, and an Intel i210 network card so that I can get decent throughput (the emulated e1000 just never performed well enough for me) and everything has been working great until I updated to 11.4 yesterday, and then VM would no longer finish booting up. :-/

 

Long story short, I set up the same hardware on a new VM using VNC (to get around having to power down the whole system due to the Radeon not resetting properly), and after a bunch of testing discovered that it is crashing whenever I plug in the ethernet cable into the i210 card and it gets an IP address.

Really weird.

 

Of note, I did also update from 6.9.1 to 6.9.2, but I've reverted back and the behaviour is the same, so I don't think that's related.

 

The hardware behind this is a Dell T7910, and it has the i210 network card and a i217-LM, and from what I remember when I first researched which to pass to Macos, the i210 was more desirable.  I suppose I can see about passing the other, but haven't had the energy to do that yet.

 

Any ideas where I can start to debug this?

[IronRooster]

Anybody have any ideas?  Does anyone use ethernet passthrough for their macs?  The card works just fine passed through to Windows and Linux.

[ghost82]

What are vendor id and product id?

Apple has for i210 8086,1533

It also includes the i225:
 

			<array>
				<string>pci8086,15f2</string>
				<string>pci8086,15f3</string>
				<string>pci8086,3100</string>
				<string>pci8086,3101</string>
				<string>pci8086,5502</string>
				<string>pci8086,d9f</string>
				<string>pci8086,15f8</string>
				<string>pci8086,15f7</string>
				<string>pci8086,15fd</string>
			</array>

If vendor-id/product-id is different than 8086,1533 may be you can spoof with them these properties with DeviceProperties in config.plist, and add the compatible/device-id entries.

Are you using any external kext or are you supposing to have it working out of the box?

 

A dump of ioreg can also help (no lan cable, but i210 passed through).

Edited June 25, 2021 by ghost82

[ghost82]

Probably this will fix your issue:

With the upgrade to 11.4 your i210 should use a new lan driver (com.apple.DriverKit-AppleEthernetE1000.dext) and not the AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext

Luckily you can still force the kext to load, because that kext is still in System/Library/Extensions, inside the plugin directory of IONetworkingFamily.kext

So, proceed as follows:

0. Check that vendor-id is 8086 and product-id is 1533 for your i210, otherwise write here product/vendor ids for a new kext, or modify yourself the attached kext with your data

1. Download the attached kext and unzip it

2. Mount your EFI, copy the extracted kext into /EFI/OC/Kexts/

3. Open config.plist and add the new kext to configuration:
 

	<key>Kernel</key>
	<dict>
		<key>Add</key>
		<array>
          ......
          ......
          ......
			<dict>
				<key>Arch</key>
				<string>x86_64</string>
				<key>BundlePath</key>
				<string>i210.kext</string>
				<key>Comment</key>
				<string>Force kext loading for i210</string>
				<key>Enabled</key>
				<true/>
				<key>ExecutablePath</key>
				<string></string>
				<key>MaxKernel</key>
				<string></string>
				<key>MinKernel</key>
				<string></string>
				<key>PlistPath</key>
				<string>Contents/Info.plist</string>
			</dict>
		</array>

 

4. Reboot and try

i210.kext.zip

Edited June 25, 2021 by ghost82

[id001]

Thank you, my i210 PCI card works again.

[IronRooster]

Hey, sorry for the slow reply, was a crazy weekend.

The kext worked for me too!  My card has the 8086,1533 for the id's, so it must have just been the new kext in 11.4

Woo!

Thank you so much!

[ghost82]

On 6/30/2021 at 3:40 AM, IronRooster said:

so it must have just been the new kext in 11.4

11.4 is using a dext in opencore, instead of a kext.

Strange is that clover still uses the kext, so clover users are not experiencing any issue.

However, the expected behavior should be to use the kext...

Edited August 22, 2021 by ghost82

[Corvinon]

Hello Thank you very much to all and especially to Ghos82. Now it works again. Remember that you are invited to a few beers, when you come here. Spain.😃

[Sky Ao]

I find this post from google search.

 

I meet similar issue that my mainboard Asus x299 ws pro has two intel i210 card. When I enabled them in bios and start to install big sur, it will panic. I have to disable the i210 card in bios and the install process succeed and I can enter macos. But if I enabled i210 in bios, the system will panic in 1 or 2 minutes after entering macos big sur. 

 

Let me try this kert to see if it can help me to resolve this issue. 

 

Thanks to all of you.

[Arrakis]

Hello, thank you very much for your kext. Very efficient.
I am under OpenCore and I had the same problem of I210 modules not working anymore when upgrading to BigSur 11.4
I'm currently on BigSur 11.5.2 and your kext is still doing wonders.
Especially since I'm on a Gigabyte TRx40 motherboard (AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X processor).
The I210 modules are those of the motherboard.
I am testing the Monterey Public Beta version and the kext is broken again.
I checked the IONetWorkingFamily.kext file it is still in System / Extensions / IONetWorkingFamily.kext with the same version of the I210 kext.
Can you help me?
Tell me what you need.

[ghost82]

15 hours ago, Arrakis said:

I am testing the Monterey Public Beta version and the kext is broken again.
I checked the IONetWorkingFamily.kext file it is still in System / Extensions / IONetWorkingFamily.kext with the same version of the I210 kext.

What are vendor/device ids of your ethernet modules?

Can you attach a dump of ioreg?

What is the output of kextstat?

Which beta version of monterey?

What issues are you experiencing?Does the modules show or do you have kernel panic?

[Arrakis]

Vendor: 8086 and Product Id 1533 (See Screenshot)

Monterey version 21A5304g (See screenshot)

I don't understand the question What is the output of kextstat? (Sorry I'm a newbie in this field)

 

Here is my Ioreg

IORegistry Arrakis.ioreg

Experiences

Modules are assigned with the wrong IP address and subnet (See Screenshot) with your kext. In this state the system is very stable.

 

To have try other solutions as long as the modules are not assigned like in the screenshot.

This is Kernel Panic at various stages before logging in or after logging in.

There is also the case with the 2 ethernet ports disabled in the Monterey system preferences. The system is stable.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Arrakis

[ghost82]

2 hours ago, Arrakis said:

Vendor: 8086 and Product Id 1533 (See Screenshot)

Monterey version 21A5304g (See screenshot)

I don't understand the question What is the output of kextstat? (Sorry I'm a newbie in this field)

Thank you for the data.

From what I see the kext is loaded instead of the dext, so the injection kext is working; what happens if you don't use the injection kext (and use the dext)?

I would not worry too much now, monterey is still bugged as hell and we are still at beta 5.

When big sur came out we had a lot of issues with networks in the beta phase, most of the issues were solved by apple in subsequent releases.

 

Btw, kextstat is a terminal command to see what kexts are loaded in mac os, but I can see from your ioreg that the injection kext is loaded.

[Arrakis]

Hello, I tried with the kext turned off and without the DEX. It's the same see screenshot.
Since I'm not sure which DEX command to turn it off I have attached a screenshot.
I remade Ioreg under Monterey.

Ioreg Arrakis.zip

[ghost82]

3 hours ago, Arrakis said:

I tried with the kext turned off

It seems that the same kext is loaded (AppleIntelI210Ethernet), so I think the injector kext is useless, as in this case the "correct" kext is loaded, apple fixed one thing and broke another one, typical....

[Arrakis]

After update of Monterey Beta 6 (21A55066j)

Still the problem of I210 ethernet modules not working.😕

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by Arrakis

[Arrakis]

Hello,

You were right, it was a malfunction of the system.

Your kext is active again under Monterey Beta 7.😃😃

[Arrakis]

Hello,

Your kext is active again under Monterey Beta 8,9 and 10 .😃😃

So glad to have found this kext, thanks again.😃😃😃😃

Edited October 17, 2021 by Arrakis

[Arrakis]

Hello,

I did a clean install for Monterey 12.0.1 (21A559)
The Intel I210 ethernet ports are new invalid.
Can you study the reason? Tell me what you need?

[ghost82]

On 10/26/2021 at 11:35 AM, Arrakis said:

Hello,

I did a clean install for Monterey 12.0.1 (21A559)
The Intel I210 ethernet ports are new invalid.
Can you study the reason? Tell me what you need?

Hi unfortunately I don't have both the hardware neither I installed monterey, and I think I will stick to big sur for a while...

It seems that the apple kext is broken, the injector kext will always work as expected; check if AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext is still there, other than that if nothing changed it's apple related and we can do near nothing to fix it.

[Arrakis]

Hello, with each Monterey update, I had hoped that the I210 modules would be functional again. I just installed the beta Ventura 13.0 and it's definitely not working. I got from Monterey for the easiest solution. the 2.5Gb Usb-c / Ethernet adapter. Works great without drivers.

[ghost82]

On 6/9/2022 at 8:43 AM, Arrakis said:

I just installed the beta Ventura 13.0 and it's definitely not working

Yes, unfortunately things are going worse in general, with apple cutting hardware compatibility a lot in the latest ventura, I can't understand how people can continue to buy apple products, especially macs, when in some cases you have 3/4 years of software updates (the 2014 mac mini for example was officially sold till the end of 2018, the mac pro 2013 till 2019, and the same for the macbook air 2017!)..when I spend money to build something powerful I expect to last for about ten years. And the worst thing is not that the hardware is outdated or not performing, it's just a market decision to sell more hardware.

In ventura the i210 driver was totally removed.

 

I'm trying to find someone who can share a fresh preinstalled disk image of ventura to check compatibility with older cpus (<ivy bridge); unfortunately, without avx2 and maybe other newer cpu instructions it's not possible to complete installation for my cpu, but should be able to boot a preinstalled image.

So, if you have a high speed connection and want to share the vdisk of an installed ventura please contact me in private, so I can continue to test the latest os and provide support for other users.

For any reason, feel free to ignore this message, I understand that it's quite a pain to share this..