Hi,

Anyone have a working driver for Intel 82579LM NIC on SuperMicro X9SCM-F for ESXi 5.0 or managed to get both NICs on X9SCM-F working?

it takes 2 command lines, about 1-2 min and a reboot to activate the second NIC in ESXi5.

Originally Posted by peetz on [H]ardform

 

Please try the following:

1. Install your machine(s) with the vanilla ESXi 5.0 ISO.

2. Log on to the console (or via ssh) of one of the machines and install the vib file by using the following commands:

esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported

esxcli software vib install -v http://files.v-front.de/net-e1001e-1.0.0.x86_64.vib

3. reboot, configure all NICs, and try to enable FDM then

umm that did not work.

 

The VIB installed successfully but when I rebooted, I still see only 1 NIC. Are you sure that driver is for ESXi 5.0? I know Chilly came out with a driver for ESXi 4.x.

 

Or maybe I should just pick up a NIC and slap it in. Do you know one that works with ESXi 5.0?

hello, i have the same board and it works.

 

here is the source of the driver (maybe you can get more info there):

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038028779&postcount=95

 

and a screenshot from my machine:

 

 

 

 

So what the hell is a "vanilla ESXi 5.0" supposed to be? I grabbed the installer from VMWare's site and installed it on my USB stick using Johnm's guide.

 

The name of the installer was: VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.0.0-469512.x86_64.iso

 

Macrio, did you install it using a different file?

After reading all the posts in the hardforum post, the only they mentioned that I had not done was to put my ESXi box in the maintenance mode.

 

I checked the VMWare versiom by using the following commands at the SSH console:

 

~ # vmware -v
VMWare ESXi 5.0.0 build-469512

~ # vmware -l
VMWare ESXi 5.0.0 GA

~ # vmkload_mod e1001e
vmkload_mod: Can not load module e1001e: module is already loaded

 

Guess I will try installing it again with the ESXi in maintenance mode after dinner and see what happens.

Ohhh other thing that I did - I already enabled the 82579LM as passthrough. Would that be causing the issue? Will have to try removing it from pass-through and see what happens. If that does not work, will try to put the ESXi in maintenance mode and re-install the driver.... Xing my fingers!

yes remove the passthrough.

 

this is my passthrough configuration:

Thanks macrio. After I removed the passthrough, 82579LM is now there.

 

So I guess I don't understand how passthrough works or is supposed to work. What I am trying to do is install a linux firewall distro like pfsense or endian and have it access one nic to WAN (Internet) and use the other nic to access lan (home). So I thought to reserve one NIC for WAN, I have to use passthrough. I am so confused. Anyone know how to do what I want to do? I know this is not related to unRAID except for the fact that they are all sharing the same box <sigh>.

 

If anyone has any suggestions, I would appreciate it. Thanks again, Macrio and Johnm for your quick responses. Cheers

Hi,

 

What passthrough does is that it hides the device for usage by ESXi and the device that you passthrough will only be available to the particular vm. The intention of this is so that you can use special hardware that ESXi does not support. (Drivers are installed in the VM instead of ESXi).

 

Personally I would never use passthrough on a NIC (assuming that ESXi has a driver for it)

Does this NIC work in unRAID in passthru mode?

Sorry for the resurrection, but it's relevant to this post - I had issues with performance with the original community driver linked to earlier in this post and have never used the LM NIC because of this.  Today I tracked down another community driver:

 

http://virtual-drive.in/2012/11/16/enabling-intel-nic-82579lm-on-intel-s1200bt-under-esxi-5-1/

 

The original guy's blog is here, in Japanese:  http://shell.peach.ne.jp/aoyama/archives/2185

 

Note that as the author states, jumbo frames don't seem to operate correctly.. but standard MTU 1500 is fine.  The 82574L NIC still operates at full speed too... nice win.

 

 

Sorry for the resurrection, but it's relevant to this post - I had issues with performance with the original community driver linked to earlier in this post and have never used the LM NIC because of this.  Today I tracked down another community driver:

 

http://virtual-drive.in/2012/11/16/enabling-intel-nic-82579lm-on-intel-s1200bt-under-esxi-5-1/

 

The original guy's blog is here, in Japanese:  http://shell.peach.ne.jp/aoyama/archives/2185

 

Note that as the author states, jumbo frames don't seem to operate correctly.. but standard MTU 1500 is fine.  The 82574L NIC still operates at full speed too... nice win.

 

Nice find. thats worth a bump..

thanks.

...What I am trying to do is install a linux firewall distro like pfsense...

 

As a BSD fan I must point out that pfsense is based on FreeBSD.