(SOLVED) How to determine what "version" ixgbe driver is actually loaded?


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I am doing some troubleshooting with AsRock Rack and the X570D4U-2L2T and abysmal throughput performance under the latest 6.9.2 and 6.10 RC2 release. One question that is of course being asked is what driver am I using, and the basics I know are we are using the in-tree driver for what seems to be the 5.14.15 kernel. The board has built in dual Intel X550 NIC's, which I have disabled for the time being and am using an older X520 add-on card which works perfect (same driver).

 

How can I tell what version of igxbe is actually installed and loaded? I did some basic digging in syslog and didn't see anything other than calls outs to ixgbe driver being loaded, but no version.

 

This is the closest I have come, and it's still not what I need since there is no actual version number:

 

image.png.93d55773e84f690fbc383ffc333c9e2a.png

Edited by cybrnook
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

We include only the in-tree driver which comes with Linux kernel source.  This driver is different from the proprietary driver maintained by Intel.

 

We used to build the latest vendor-supplied driver found here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000/files/ixgbe stable/

 

But we quit doing this because often that driver would not build against the latest Linux sources.  The best solution would be for Intel to quit maintaining their own proprietary driver and just keep the in-tree driver up-to-date.  (Also get off sourceforge)

 

Our approach moving forward starting with 6.11 release is to create a category of apps called "proprietary modules". These will be individual plugins kept on github.  Each time we update the Linux kernel we'll rebuild all the proprietary drivers, and if they build correctly, push the new module to the repo.  Then OS Update will check your installed list of proprietary drivers and if they all were successfully updated then we'll proceed with update.  I know this probably doesn't help you right now.

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Thanks for the update @limetech, I guess in the future when 6.11 comes out and the move to drivers as plugins becomes available, then knowing what driver you're using would be more obvious. Making the ability to pick and choose for comparison much easier to help weed out issues or regressions.

 

In my work with AsRock currently, is there any idea what "version" the current "in-tree" driver is, let's say for the current RC3 release which seems to be using the 5.15.27 linux kernel, is there some command I can run to pull a version string or revision number from it? Or is it really just an unknown?

Edited by cybrnook
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'modinfo ixgbe' is supposed to but I see for some reason it's not output.  I do know this driver seems pretty old.

 

I tried compiling the their latest vendor-supplied driver and it seems to compile ok with 5.15 kernel we're using.  I'll be pushing a -rc4 release "soon" and I'll add it but,

a) You get all the heat if this breaks other people's use of ixgbe, in which case I'll have to revert - lol

b) We will be moving to 5.16 kernel and if it doesn't build then I'll have to revert as well.

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22 hours ago, limetech said:

I tried compiling the their latest vendor-supplied driver and it seems to compile ok with 5.15 kernel we're using.  I'll be pushing a -rc4 release "soon" and I'll add it but,

a) You get all the heat if this breaks other people's use of ixgbe, in which case I'll have to revert - lol

b) We will be moving to 5.16 kernel and if it doesn't build then I'll have to revert as well.

Fair enough, generous of you and very much appreciated. At least when RC4 comes out I'll know that my perf issues were driver related or not and we can move forward. If you decide to revert back post RC4 to the old in-tree, then either I stick on RC4 and I wait for drivers as plugins or I continue to have to fallback to an add on nic for the time being.

 

For anyone who has issues with RC4 related to the latest intel driver in rc4, I apologize in advance right now 🥺 However, I would like to think of it as nothing but a positive change.

Edited by cybrnook
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On 3/11/2022 at 4:03 PM, limetech said:

b) We will be moving to 5.16 kernel and if it doesn't build then I'll have to revert as well.

Looking at the current changelog for intel's ixgbe driver, seems they already added support for 5.16, so we should at least be good for this go round: https://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000/files/ixgbe stable/5.14.6/

 

Quote

Changes in this release:

- Added support for 5.16 kernel version

- Added support for RHEL 8.5

- Various bug fixes

 

The readme for igb is not quite as specific.

Edited by cybrnook
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  • cybrnook changed the title to (SOLVED) How to determine what "version" ixgbe driver is actually loaded?
  • 1 month later...

Sorry to say, the Intel ixgbe driver is causing problems for other people and we will have to revert to in-tree driver.

Something on our list to implement for 6.11 is a "system plugin" feature that will let you select via CA third-party modules (drivers) to install very early in system startup, e.g., before networking is initialized.  This will permit you to install the Intel driver if that works for you.

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, limetech said:

Sorry to say, the Intel ixgbe driver is causing problems for other people and we will have to revert to in-tree driver.

Something on our list to implement for 6.11 is a "system plugin" feature that will let you select via CA third-party modules (drivers) to install very early in system startup, e.g., before networking is initialized.  This will permit you to install the Intel driver if that works for you.

 

 

 

Thank you appriciate it.

You doing a great job and I will never want to miss or have to miss unRAID ever ever again.

Edited by RiDDiX
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