Intel 82577LM should work out-of-the-box on esxi 6.5 but doesn't. Ideas, why?

[Traveler124]

Folks, I am trying to run ESXi 6.5 on a machine with an Intel 82577LM network card.

This card registers itself with hardware IDs 8086:10ea. This one *should* work out of the box with the e1000/e1000e drivers which are part of the ESXi 6.5 install package.

But it doesn't... It doesn't install with the dreaded "No network card found" message. However, I can see in the install messages that ESXi is actually talking to the card but is failing to initialize it.

Anybody else who has an intel 82577LM and has successfully installed ESXi 6.5?

I know that there are ways to make older ESXi versions work with custom drivers and have done that, but I am specifically interested in 6.5.

Thanks for your help

Peter

[Flagelated]

Hi Peter,

I'm despairing with the same issue. Did you ever find a solution for this?

BR

[MattiasN81]

Same issue here, did som extra research now and found an open reddit thread about this

https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/5t3dov/esxi_65_intel_i219v_not_workingdespite_being_on/

Not the same card but exactly the same problems, when i grep 10ea from vmkernel.log is see that the card is already claimed when the ne1000 driver tries to claim it.

removing the ne1000 driver does not solve the issue for me either

[MattiasN81]

Finally solved it, or at least came up with a workaround

So here is what i did to get it to work.

the culprit is this case is the new native ne1000 driver

gave it a shot and removed the ne1000 driver from the ISO and remapped the card to  the older e1000e driver that had support for this card since ESXi 5.5U3 but that failed.

i also tried to leave the ne1000 driver and only remapped the PCI ID to the e1000e driver with no success, same as before "No supported adapters found" during installation.

I knew that this card worked in 6.0 so i installed 6.0 and it worked as expected, then i upgraded the installation with the latest 6.5a offline bundle (ESXi650-201701001.zip )

and the upgrade went fine but as expected the ne1000 driver failed to recognize the card, but at least i had a working install now and was able to access the DCUI.

Then i disabled the ne1000 driver using the command "esxcli system module set --enabled=false --module=ne1000" and rebooted, and voila, the older e1000e kicked in and initialized the card without problems :smileygrin:.

Still beats me why removing the ne1000 driver directly from the installation media never worked.

Hope this helps

[Flagelated]

Hey Mattias,

thanks for letting us know!

I've tried it and it works! I have now an working ESXi 6.5 on a Lenovo X201 :smileygrin:

[matt_sweet]

I did a fresh install of ESXi 6.5a with a USB NIC to get up and running. Then after disabling the ne1000 module and a reboot it still didnt see the nic. Should I start with the ESXi 6.0 the way you had success or did you start with 6.0 just to be able to get up and running?

[MattiasN81]

Upgrade from 6.0 is a necessary step, i never got it to work otherwise.

I suspect that VMware did some changes to the e1000e driver in 6.5 that rendered this card unusable and when u upgrade from 6.0 the old driver is left untouched

[matt_sweet]

I grabbed the 6.0 Update 2 ISO and tried to do a fresh install and got the No Network Adapters error on install. What version of 6.0 did you start with?

I used VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.0.0.update02-3620759.x86_64.iso

[MattiasN81]

Strange, i used the same ISO.

can you press alt+f1 during install so the console shows up and see what actually happens when the driver tries to initialize the card?