Installing Intel igb driver and EPCT for multi port network cards

I noticed today when I was plugging cables into my unused ports, and moving them around, the speed stuck at 100 on a lot of ports until I rebooted. When I rebooted, the port configuration that was saved in the card in 2017 was applied instead of them being all 1000M.

Tried the port configure utility (EPCT) from my CD ROM that came with the card and it did not detect the network card. Downloaded and tried the latest version of EPCT (epct64e) and it did not detect any intel network cards. In the documentation, it says to download and install the driver from Intel if EPCT is not working. Downloaded the driver (igb-5.17.4) and when I went to install the file (by make, which I had to download) it gave me this error:

common.mk:71: *** Kernel header files not in any of the expected locations.
common.mk:72: *** Install the appropriate kernel development package, e.g.
common.mk:73: *** kernel-devel, for building kernel modules and try again.  Stop.

There are no build or compile tools available in IPFire. You can install the make addon but there is still no gcc package available.

If you want to build a different driver into the IPFire system you cannot just build it, on its own, and install it in IPFire as the kernel is signed for all modules and will not accept any changed drivers or modules.

Your only option to include a different, modified or new driver is to build the whole IPFire system and install from the generated iso file.

https://www.ipfire.org/docs/devel/ipfire-2-x/build-howto

This would enable you to add different drivers into the build specification and build IPFire to obtain an new iso with the new drivers included with it and signed by the kernel you are installing.

Thank you on the heads up about the gcc.I will install that plus whatever I need to compile a driver that should have been part of the OS install.

I fallowed the instructions and after 10 hours, at the end when it checks for missing root files it spits out

8812au-20210629-(a MD5 hash)-kmod-6.6.47-ipfire is missing a root file. [FAIL]
checking for root file consistancy.... **** build finish

I’ll work on compiling the driver tonight. I’m just glad that machine is robust enough to compile while running ipfire and the network. At least that driver does most of the Intel server cards including the newer SPF+ cards. This driver I got from Intel is their new version. The port configuration tool wouldn’t be hard to put into the web gui since its a command line based and a single compiled file.

There are several things going on and its not ipfire related, like Linus changing how network drivers are started at boot up. On a multi port network card it decided to load the port settings in eprom like it does on windows server instead of them initializing as 4 seperate network interfaces with the default configuration of a single port network card. So now I have to find a way to install the driver from Intel and its port managing software since that part is now working.