Intel 82579LM and 82579V

C

Chilly

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 3, 2005
Messages
2,031
Hey Guys, just realized that I never did post this here.

I see a lot of people here using the SuperMicro X9SCM and X9SCL board on this forum. As many of you know this board contains one supported Intel 82574L NIC, as well as one Intel 82579LM NIC, which is NOT officially supported. Because its not supported, the included driver doesn't work with it at all. The issue basically is because VMWare uses OLD(1.2 something) driver source code to compile their e1000 driver.

Well, now you CAN use that NIC! I did a whole lot of work taking the latest driver and making all the same modifications that vmware does to their offical drivers to compile my own based on the(at the time) latest 1.3.10a source!

capture1qu.png


Get it HERE! http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=11181#p11181
 
Wow that was easy and works great. Just plugged the flash drive hosting the ESXi install into a Ubuntu machine, and replaced oem.tgz on partition3 with yours. Thanks!
 
I followed your instructions on vm-help about a week ago to get my 82579 up on that same board. Been working great since.

I was kinda shocked the first time I installed esxi on the SCM and couldn't figure out why I was only seeing 1 nic. Assumed (incorrectly) that it would be supported out of the box since it was an intel nic.
 
Had the same issue with my Intel BOXDQ57TM board (uses the 82579 NIC) a few months back and used the same script to modify the install disc to get my onboard NIC working. That site has been extremely helpful in getting whiteboxes going.
 
oh and if you follow the original thread on vm-help chilly split the oem.tgz file into two parts (it's a pretty large file) :)
 
Chilly or Anyone,

How do you get the ESXI Boot CD to load on X9SCM-F. When I tried to boot via USB, it hang at yellow screen loading HID.

Thanks.
 
durianmy,

I was able to boot the ESXi 4.1 U1 CD via the Virtual Storage over IPMI.

Things that I would try if its hanging like you say (in no particular order):

1) redownload the ISO
2) reseat the memory modules
3) reset the BIOS to factory defaults
4) strip the hardware down to the bare minimum (CPU, 1 stick of RAM, no disks, no controllers)
 
Finally got it resolve by reseting the BIOS to defaults. That seems to clear the 82574L Ethernet controller. See my post on "ESXI boot CD hang at "Loading module HID" for more details.

Thanks.
 
I've seen a few thread around the Internet about Intel's 82579LM chipset. Is this just because it's "new" or are there issues with this chipset? I ask because I'm leaning towards the SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O and would like to retire my Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Adapter (EXPI9402PT).

Thank you.
 
Psychor said:
I've seen a few thread around the Internet about Intel's 82579LM chipset. Is this just because it's "new" or are there issues with this chipset? I ask because I'm leaning towards the SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O and would like to retire my Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Adapter (EXPI9402PT).

Thank you.
Click to expand...

No issues, its just new so its not always fully, officially, supported(yet).
 
vSphere 5 GA is available, i juste run some test and Intel 82579 is always not supported
did someone success to use it ?
 
I'm not sure if the drivers are the same between 4 and 5... but I've got a board with the 82579V controller on it, and I just got ESXi5 up and running today. I was planning on just passing that controller through to a VM as I've got a couple supported NICs installed already anyways, but I can try this file. I've installed to two USB sticks, so if I hose one of them, I'm not too concerned. I can try to do it later tonight.
 
Hm, yeah, ESXi5 is completely different. I'm no expert at compiling/injecting drivers by any means. I have followed directions in the past to compile drivers for an old Marvell NIC (ESXi3.5 I think) and then used someone's pre-compiled driver for a Realtek NIC on ESXi4.

ESXi5 doesn't even seem to use an oem.tgz file let alone any .o files for drivers. Unless I'm completely missing something, I don't see how this will work for ESXi5. No biggy for me; I was planning on dedicating it to a VM anyways.
 
Like DuronClocker, I figured that I would just pass the 82579LM nic to a VM as well. However, it seems that my VM, pfSense (FreeBSD 8.1), does not have a driver for it either! So, I'm stuck else I add in a network card...

Chilly, you think you can get this working?
 
Yes, but I'm looking to do it for PFSense. That is based off of FreeBSD 8.1 so it does not have this driver! :/
 
So, with that being said, the best bet for us who want to use this for pfSense or another unsupported platform is actually to get the NIC working in ESXi. Then we can pass through the other NIC which IS supported by pfSense. Until that happens though, we are stuck with add-in cards unless someone here is really good with drivers (Chilly??)
 
You could perhaps try m0n0wall, the beta of it is running on freebsd 8.2. If you do, let me know how it goes, currently planning an all-in-one build, so I'd be quite interested in the results.
 
Ugh, thanks for the suggestion, but I can't imagine going to that length of avoid using an add-in card :)
 
Hey Guys,

I'm off in the middle of nowhere(thus little/no internet) relaxing and enjoying a small vacation. As soon as I get back home, I'll study the new vSphere 5 SDK and get a working driver up.

A preliminary view of ESXi 5 and how it works, its actually very similar to ESXi 4.1, which isn't surprising. There are some fundamental changes though;
1. As far as I can tell(I could be wrong, only spent a few minutes on it), drivers aren't directly compatible, you can't just load a driver from ESXi 4.1 in ESXi 5. A recompile will be needed, though I suspect only minimal code changes will be needed.
2. There's no OEM.tgz type method that will work, so injecting drivers into the Installer CD will take a few extra steps(not much harder though, for the lazy method, new version of ESXi Customizer which supports 5.0 is already out!)

I wanted to update the driver anyways, once I'm home and get working on it, I'll release a new version(with instructions) for both ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.
 
Thanks for the update Chilly. Not a huge rush as add-in cards work, but it is a "nice to have working" kind of thing.

I'll wait for your release and maybe by then the final release of pfSense will be out too.
 
unclerunkle said:
Thanks for the update Chilly. Not a huge rush as add-in cards work, but it is a "nice to have working" kind of thing.

I'll wait for your release and maybe by then the final release of pfSense will be out too.
Click to expand...

I beg the difference,

Chilly, Please put this on top priority , if you can of course , I am definitely waiting for news in this subject, and I am sure there are many others as well, you are a Sauveur :)

cliper
 
Hi Chilly,

I am the author of ESXi-Customizer. As you already mentioned ESXi-Customizer already supports customizing the ESXi 5.0 install ISO with OEM.tgz-style driver packages.

I provided detailed background information on the structure of the ISO here: http://v-front.blogspot.com/2011/08/anatomy-of-esxi-50-installation-cd-and.html

Information on what you need to feed to the script is here: http://v-front.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-esxi-customizer-supports-esxi-50.html

With the method that I described it is currently not possible to overwrite files that are already on the install media. So, please use file names in the OEM.tgz file that do not exist in the driver packages that are already built-in. Example: If you provide an updated e1000-driver that supports more NICs than the built-in one, then please name the module "e1000-1" or similar, and the map and ids-file "e1000-1.map" and "e1000-1.ids" respectively.

If you need information on how the original Linux driver source code needs to be modified for ESXi 5.0 I suggest that you look at one of the driver offline bundles that VMware made available at
http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_vsphere/5_0#drivers_tools (Section "Driver CDs").
These packages also include the open source code of the driver!

Let me know if I can be of any further help, and thank you for working on this. Providing these drivers is a great service to the community!

- Andreas
 
Has anyone succeed in getting the 82579LM to work under esxi 5? I have a intel DQ67SW board with i7 2600 and so far everything works including pass through except the NIC.
any help would be much appreciated
thank you
 
Chilly is working on it as far as I know. It's just a matter of time until he gets something working, and we'll be the first to know.
 
Am having trouble getting 4.1U1 to work--let alone ESXi version 5.0.0 (which according to forum folks doesn't fully support newer LAN chipsets). Am thinking that I may need a modified simple.map/pci.id within the OEM.tgz -- however am not entirely sure if this is a requirement for everything to work. :confused: Have I missed something in the procedure?

Getting the following error during installation:
File "/lib/python2.5/vmkctl.py", line 11331, in Load
def Load(*args): return _vmkctl.ModuleImpl_Load(*args)
vmkctl.HostCtlException: Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmfs3: Failure​
System Information:
Server: Lenovo ThinkServer TS130 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859106114)
Processor: Intel Xeon E3-1235
NIC: Intel Onboard 82579LM LAN
Storage Controller: Intel PCH RAID1
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533)

Here are the steps I'm following:

  1. Download from VMWare: VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64.iso (http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_vsphere/4_1)
  2. Download from V-front (Andreas Peetz): ESXi-Customizer-v2.5.exe (http://v-front.blogspot.com/p/esxi-customizer.html)
  3. Download from VM-Help (Chilly) Download: OEM.tgz (http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=11181#p11181)
  4. Extract ESXi-Customizer and create new ISO by running ESXi-Customizer.cmd as Administrator
  5. Select original VMWare ESXi ISO: VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64.iso
  6. Select customized OEM.tgz: OEM.tgz
  7. Select working directory: C:\
  8. Browse to C:\ESXi-4.1-Custom.iso -- Burn ESXi-4.1-Custom.iso -- Place burned disc into new server
  9. PROFIT?!??!

Let me know if I've missed a step or misunderstood the process of modifying VMWare installation ISOs.
 
Last edited:
You downloaded *both* RAR files and extracted the OEM.tgz file out of the rar files properly correct? It is *possible* but unlikely that IBM has their own pci.id code. If they do, you'd have to add it to the pci.id of the oem.tgz

Do this for me please, boot up the system using the custom iso. Once you get to the install screen, press ALT-F1, that will get you into the console. By default the username is root and blank password. Once your logged in, run these commands in order and tell me what the output is for each.
Code: 
esxcfg-nics -l
Is anything listed here, if so what. After this command, run the next one;
Code: 
vmkload_mod e1001e
And then run this following command again, and let me know what, if anything is listed here, and what its PCI number is.
Code: 
esxcfg-nics -l

Once you try that, we can go from there :)
 
BurrCheese said:
Has anyone succeed in getting the 82579LM to work under esxi 5? I have a intel DQ67SW board with i7 2600 and so far everything works including pass through except the NIC.
any help would be much appreciated
thank you
Click to expand...

i cant even get esxi5 installed as the GUI states no network adapter found... hope someone knows how to get it going...

i have 2 hp elite 8200's (i5 3.10ghz) to install esxi5 on for my lab machines...
 
Hi Telefragger,

please follow Chilly's instructions to find out the PCI ID of your NIC.
You can then use the "Advanced-edit"-mode of ESXi-Customizer to change the contents of the OEM.tgz file before it is applied to the ISO. Check the file /etc/vmware/simple.map to see whether it includes a mapping for your device ID. If not try to add it by copying and modifying an existing entry for the e1001e driver.

- Andreas
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top