i219-LM: NVM Checksum failure when changing MAC address from 88:88:88:88:87:88

[nickpelling]

I'm trying to get a Nexcom 7260 device (based on an i3-1115GRE) working with Debian, but was dismayed to see that the unit I was working with had the 88:88:88:88:87:88 MAC address bug.

So, I downloaded eeupdate64e (V5.35.12.00) for Linux and ran it (having first added iomem=relaxed to the kernel command line). With /NIC=1 /MAC=xxxxxxxxxxxx, it reports:

NIC Bus Dev Fun Vendor-Device  Branding string

=== === === === ============= ====================

1    0    31   06  8086[-]15FB    Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (13) I219-LM

1: Updating Mac Address to xxxxxxxxxxxx...Done.

1:  Updating Checksum and CRCs...Failed.

I've tried /TEST, /DEBUG, /CALCCHKSUM etc, but nothing seems to set the checksum correctly. According to dmesg, e1000e is reporting "Invalid MAC Address: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx", which is followed by "probe of 0000:00:1f:6 failed with error -5": which is why the NIC isn't now working.

What should I do with eeupdate64e to fix the MAC address and checksum? Without this, this unit seems basically to be a brick.

Thanks!

[nickpelling]

Since posting, I've tried booting from a DOS disk to use EEUPDATE.EXE (annoyingly, the device wouldn't boot from DOS) and running EEUPDATEW64.EXE under Windows. This suffered from all the same issues, along with emitting an "Unable to initialize adapter 1 code c86a002" message.

There also seem to be plenty of posts relating to the same kind of problem:

• https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/294753/intel-ethernet-connection-i219-v-not-working-under-linux-on-an-asuspro-b-laptop 
• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=269606 
• https://community.intel.com/t5/Embedded-Connectivity/eeupdate-with-I210-not-working-with-UEFI-Bios-and-WIN10-UEFI/m-p/660051 
• https://community.intel.com/t5/Embedded-Intel-Core-Processors/eeupdate64e-fails-Unable-to-initialize-adapter-2-code-c86a2002/td-p/241814 
• https://superuser.com/questions/1104537/how-to-repair-the-checksum-of-the-non-volatile-memory-nvm-of-intel-ethernet-co/1106641#1106641 
• https://forums.unraid.net/topic/90090-i219v-issue/ 

I've tried following suggestions given in these various threads (but with no luck, alas).