Intel 82573 NIC Patch
Patching the Intel Pro/1000 82573 eeprom MANC mis-programming bug, With thanks to Jack Vogel.
Problem
FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE with an intel em interface (82573 chipset). After medium-heavy traffic, the NIC locks up completely and no traffic passes for a long time, perhaps longer than half an hour.
Then, it recovers and prints this to syslog:
em0: watchdog timeout -- resetting
em0: link state changed to DOWN
em0: link state changed to UP
Solution
- Format a floppy disk ( fdformat /dev/fd0 )
- Download and write the FreeDOS boot floppy to it ( dd if=fdboot.img of=/dev/fd0 )
- Copy the dcgdis.exe program to the floppy
- Boot the floppy
- Press option “2” to boot DOS with no drivers
- Run dcgdis and it will report the patch status
- Published: 07 January 2008