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

  1. Format a floppy disk ( fdformat /dev/fd0 )
  2. Download and write the FreeDOS boot floppy to it ( dd if=fdboot.img of=/dev/fd0 )
  3. Copy the dcgdis.exe program to the floppy
  4. Boot the floppy
  5. Press option “2” to boot DOS with no drivers
  6. Run dcgdis and it will report the patch status