ixgbe and ixgbevf drivers are not working in virtualization environment

[Rémi Pauchet]

Hi,

I'm trying to use the ixgbe (10Gb) driver in a FreeBSD virtual machine on an esxi 5 using DirectPath (PCI Passthrough) and the card is detected, but I can't get a link (status: no carrier)

ix0: <Intel(R) PRO/10GbE PCI-Express Network Driver, Version - 2.3.11> mem 0xd2420000-0xd243ffff,0xd2400000-0xd2403fff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci3

ix0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
	options=401bb<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,VLAN_HWTSO>
	ether 00:e0:ed:1c:99:4e
	nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
	media: Ethernet autoselect
	status: no carrier

I have also tested with XenServer 6, using SR-IOV (ixgbevf driver) with the same result: the driver is loading, but no link detected.

In both case (VMWare DirectPath and XenServer SR-IOV), I tested Linux with success.


The card is an Intel 82599EB, the motherboard is an Intel X58 (supermicro X8ST3) with a Xeon W3680 and I've tested FreeBSD 8.3 and 9.0

I've found a forum thread with the same issue: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=29855 and no answer :)


Please find in attachment the dmesg (boot -v) with the ix driver compiled with DEBUG flags using vmware.


Can anyone provide feedback about this issue ?

Regards,
Rémi Pauchet