SOLVED: HP / HPE - igb 0000:02:00.0: The NVM Checksum Is Not Valid

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This is the first time I try HP blades, older, granted but even IBM drivers can be found while HP locks them up as the greedy company they seem to be.

Where in the world can I download the latest/last firmware updates for gen8 sl230 blades? Nowhere is what I'm finding, making the blades practically useless in the after market world that could come back as new customers for HP.

UPDATE: The solution is several comments down.
 
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I honestly didn't expect even one person to know what I'm talking about so never thought I'd see a reply, was just venting :).

Both really. I have older gen8 sl230 blades and the highest level of updates I've been able to find is SPP-update-2018110.2018_1114.38.
This helped to make the blades useful, sort of, but I'm still seeing problems with Ethernet in some cases.

I say sort of because the only thing I've been able to install on them is vmware esx, not operating systems directly. All of them complain that they cannot see the SAS storage, even though I paid for licenses. I was able to work my way up to 6.7 by starting at 5.5. but no OS's will install without a special driver.

In this case, I'm trying to install pfsense on one blade and I keep getting this;

igb0 "nvm checksum is not valid"

2021-11-21_121914.jpg
2021-11-21_121949.jpg
 

LodeRunner

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Apr 27, 2019
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There's an Intel utility called BOOTUTIL. You can use it to reset the NIC to defaults and that may sort things out for you. I have not personally encountered or troubleshot this error, so good luck. Or reflash firmware.

Sources:
Missing NIC port, em0: The EEPROM Checksum Is Not Valid | Netgate Forum
Missing NIC port, em0: The EEPROM Checksum Is Not Valid (follow-up) | Netgate Forum
[solved] Intel I350-T4 gives boot problem | Netgate Forum
Intel® Ethernet Connections Boot Utility, Preboot Images, and EFI Drivers
 
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I went down the Intel bootutil wormhole. I'm able to download the tool, extract the files but never any driver to be found.
 
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LodeRunner

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There's no driver to find because you don't have a driver problem, you have a hardware problem. So you need to use said hardware tools to fix it.
 
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That's why I'm posting, because I'm not fully clear what problem I have. I installed a 10GB dual Ethernet flex card and that works fine so must be related only to the built in NICs since the rest of the server works. To me, that's not 100% a hardware problem but a firmware/driver one.
 

LodeRunner

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Apr 27, 2019
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The error message is for the NIC EEPROM. It's a hardware level problem that appears to be fixable with Intel's tools to clear the NIC settings or reflash it.

Edit: because of the EEPROM error, the driver doesn't load, resulting in the NICs not being visible to the system. The device will still show up in lspci/dmesg/etc. but since the driver exited with code 5, the device never gets mapped into the OS. I saw some Linux related notes about being able to pass some kernel/driver parameter that tells the driver to ignore EEPROM checksums. But in the end, the correct fix is to get the EEPROM into a known good state.
 
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I understand what you mean now.
Yes, I also came across such notes when I started digging into this but didn't keep track since I wasn't quite sure what the problem was yet.
I have been looking this morning for a way to use the Intel fix with no luck. I'm going to be using the 10Gbe NICs but it would be nice to have the onboard 1Gb NICs working too. I'll keep digging as I have time. At least thanks to these replies, I have some leads now.

Thank you very much.
 
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I found this if it helps anyone.


BTW, this is also why I thought perhaps firmware/driver.
2021-11-22_093946.jpg
 

LodeRunner

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Apr 27, 2019
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I found this if it helps anyone.


BTW, this is also why I thought perhaps firmware/driver.
View attachment 20566
Firmware and drivers are not the same thing; conflating those is going to result in confusion when troubleshooting. NVM stands for Non-Volatile Memory and EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) is a type of non-volatile memory. So what your seeing appears to be related to how different OS/driver combinations report the hardware status (your first screenshots being pfSense/FreeBSD, and this one appears to be Linux? I don't recall pfSense having the timing information in the boot messages, but I'm not in a place to go reboot one for fun to double check.)
 
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Yes, it happened with multiple operating systems I was trying to install. I threw Ubuntu on it now since I can get the Os installed thanks to the flex card. Once the OS is on, I might be able to fix the 1GB NICs, then re-install pfsense. It's a lot of nonsense but I hate junking usable hardware.
 
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I'm going to keep updating this comment with my progress in case I solve it and it might help someone else.

I quickly installed Ubunut 20.04 server.

# lspci -nn | grep Ethernet
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:1521] (rev 01)
02:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:1521] (rev 01)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Emulex Corporation OneConnect 10Gb NIC (be3) [19a2:0710] (rev 01)
07:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Emulex Corporation OneConnect 10Gb NIC (be3) [19a2:0710] (rev 01)

# dmesg | grep igb
[ 5.566910] igb: Intel(R) Gigabit Ethernet Network Driver - version 5.6.0-k
[ 5.585573] igb: Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Intel Corporation.
[ 6.168422] igb 0000:02:00.0: The NVM Checksum Is Not Valid
[ 7.400510] igb: probe of 0000:02:00.0 failed with error -5
[ 7.548977] igb 0000:02:00.1: The NVM Checksum Is Not Valid
[ 7.912319] igb: probe of 0000:02:00.1 failed with error -5

I downloaded the tool from Intel;

preboot_26.6.tar

I extracted the files onto Ubuntu. After extraction;

I found the install utility;
$ chmod 755 install
$ ./install
$ apt install make gcc
$ ./install

I think it was a wasted step since it might have installed a driver for Ubuntu while I want to update the driver.

$ cd APPS/BootUtil/Linux_x64
$ chmod +x bootutil64e
$ sudo ./bootutil64e

# ./bootutil64e

Intel(R) Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility
BootUtil version 1.37.28.0
Copyright (C) 2003-2021 Intel Corporation

Type BootUtil -? for help

Port Network Address Location Series WOL Flash Firmware Version
==== =============== ======== ======= === ============================= =======
1 9CB6540CA194 2:00.0 Gigabit YES UEFI,PXE Enabled,OCD 1.5.43
2 9CB6540CA195 2:00.1 Gigabit YES UEFI,PXE Enabled,OCD 1.5.43

So then I did the following;

$ cd APPS/BootUtil/Linux_x64/
$ sudo ./bootutil64e -NIC=1 -UP=Combo -FILE=/new/APPS/BootUtil/BootIMG.FLB
$ sudo ./bootutil64e -NIC=2 -UP=Combo -FILE=/new/APPS/BootUtil/BootIMG.FLB
$ shutdown -r now

Logged back in and checked;

# dmesg | grep igb
[ 5.908348] igb: Intel(R) Gigabit Ethernet Network Driver - version 5.6.0-k
[ 5.942247] igb: Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Intel Corporation.
[ 6.216994] igb 0000:02:00.0: added PHC on eth0
[ 6.233951] igb 0000:02:00.0: Intel(R) Gigabit Ethernet Network Connection
[ 6.251728] igb 0000:02:00.0: eth0: (PCIe:5.0Gb/s:Width x4) 9c:b6:54:0c:a1:94
[ 6.270162] igb 0000:02:00.0: eth0: PBA No: 0960FF-0FF
[ 6.288679] igb 0000:02:00.0: Using MSI-X interrupts. 8 rx queue(s), 8 tx queue(s)
[ 7.022038] igb 0000:02:00.1: added PHC on eth1
[ 7.046191] igb 0000:02:00.1: Intel(R) Gigabit Ethernet Network Connection
[ 7.071139] igb 0000:02:00.1: eth1: (PCIe:5.0Gb/s:Width x4) 9c:b6:54:0c:a1:95
[ 7.097067] igb 0000:02:00.1: eth1: PBA No: 0960FF-0FF
[ 7.122791] igb 0000:02:00.1: Using MSI-X interrupts. 8 rx queue(s), 8 tx queue(s)
[ 7.175356] igb 0000:02:00.0 eno1: renamed from eth0
[ 7.223950] igb 0000:02:00.1 eno2: renamed from eth1
[ 17.838619] igb 0000:02:00.0: DCA enabled
[ 17.838645] igb 0000:02:00.1: DCA enabled

# ./bootutil64e

Intel(R) Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility
BootUtil version 1.37.28.0
Copyright (C) 2003-2021 Intel Corporation

Type BootUtil -? for help

Port Network Address Location Series WOL Flash Firmware Version
==== =============== ======== ======= === ============================= =======
1 9CB6540CA194 2:00.0 Gigabit YES UEFI,CLP,PXE Enabled 1.5.89
2 9CB6540CA195 2:00.1 Gigabit YES UEFI,CLP,PXE Enabled 1.5.89

Drivers are updated. Now I'll try re-installing pfsense one more time and see if it finds all of the NICs.
 
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