Jeremy Gray wrote:
I have a tyan s2880 motherboard with dual broadcom NICs on it.When I upgraded to the latest kernel, (kernel-image-2.6.11-9-amd64-k8-smp) I lost the NIC because I guess tg3 support wasn't included.Does it work yet? Is there somewhere to track this so we know when it will work?When I try to do an apt-get dist-upgrade or apt-get -u upgrade, then it always wants to include this new kernel (that will break my system).I am new to debian, so I'm not sure what my options are here.
Hi Jeremy, I have the same motherboard and suggest-- unless there's a feature you know you need in the new kernel, don't upgrade
I've been running 2.6.9-ac8 for more than a year and it's flawless. What more do you want?
-- if you're running Debian sid, it's not advisable to run apt-get -u upgrade (in my view)
This is a somewhat bleeding edge flavor of Debian, and may contain packages that haven't been extensively tested. So I would argue for selective upgrades, especially if you're new to this.
-- the tyan s2880 NICs still seem to need a tg3 driver with proprietary firmware
The mainline kernel from kernel.org includes this firmware, but it violates Debian's Free Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines) and was removed from Debian's version of the kernel. Until a free solution is found for these NICs, you either don't upgrade your kernel or upgrade it using the tg3 driver from the mainline kernel (patching it in), or simply run
a mainline kernel (probably not ideal, though I ended up doing that). Dave