Network problem with e1000e after upgrade from core 173 to 191

Hello IPFire fellows,

I have an IPFIRE firewall which stayed on build/core 173 up to January/2025 (I know, I know, I should have done the updates before, but this is what it is).
I started updating from core 173 to 188. Then 188 to 191.
Everything seems fine, however, from time to time (I don’t know yet what specifically triggers the problem) the e1000e Ethernet boards hang, with a dmesg message:
e1000e 0000:00:1f.6 green0: Detected Hardware Unit Hang
or in another interface
e1000e 0000:00:19.0 red0: Detected Hardware Unit Hang:

And the network stops responding. I trace back the problem to faulty(buggy) hardware chipsets from intel and the TSO problem, and I will try the workaround based on the topic found here
https://community.ipfire.org/t/network-error-after-core-update-188/12154

However, when I was operating with core 173 I had no problems at all, with an incredible uptime, with no network failures.

Some have changed in the e1000e driver?
Some have pointed out that this NIC isn’t reliable, despite the fact it is an Intel chipset. I was not planning to change this NIC. But I’m willing to try cheap Realtek Gigabit chipsets instead.

Any comments?

Thanks in advance for all help and good work.

Eduardo Pellini

This type of problem has occurred with this driver since 2013 and having no problems and then getting problems after there has been a kernel update seems to be par for the course for this driver. Other drivers don’t seem to suffer when the same kernel update occurs so it looks like something is not so well written for this driver.

Please see these posts covering the same issue and some giving fixes.

https://community.ipfire.org/t/e10001-detected-hardware-unit-hang/13414

https://community.ipfire.org/t/green-and-blue-network-down-since-upgrade-core-190/13419

https://community.ipfire.org/t/e1000e-green0-detected-hardware-unit-hang/6324

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