[Xen-users] 82574L PCI Express NIC in Xen

["Dustin Henning" <Dustin.Henning@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

        The gigabit NIC on my mainboard died, and I am currently running on
a PCI 10/100 nic.  I want to get a gigabit NIC installed as soon as
possible, preferably a PCI-Express one, but I am not sure what will and
won't work with the native xen kernel, and I don't really want to custom
build my own kernel because I have yet to successfully compile a xen kernels
in spite of the fact that I was regularly compiling kernels at one point.  I
am currently running Fedora 8, which has 2.6.21 (presumably with a lot of
backports) for xen, but I would gladly switch to CentOS 5.3 if this NIC was
compatible with the 2.6.18 kernel.  I have been searching the net and found
some kernel log indicating that support was added in 2.6.28, but buy.com
lists the NIC as supporting Xen, so I am not sure what to think.  Can anyone
tell me whether the NIC would be supported in Fedora 8 or Centos 5.3?  While
I am guessing it wouldn't, as I don't see any kernel rpms, would using Xen
3.4 from http://www.gitco.de/repo/ with CentOS increase or decrease the
likelihood that the NIC would be supported?  Also, can anyone tell me if
3.4.1 rpms are on the way to gitco?  I need to use GPLPV drivers in Windows
XP, and I understand the newer versions to work better with 3.4.1 than with
prior versions (though I don't know if this applies to XP or only newer
OSes).
        The NIC is an Intel EXPI9301CT (with the 82574L chipset); I don't
intend to buy it from buy.com, they just happened to show up when I did a
search for xen 82574L, so my source may not have any given alternative
suggestions.  However, any suggestions are appreciated.  I prefer to stick
with CentOS because I am more familiar with this flavor than the Debian/BSD
based ones, and as that comment may indicate, my Linux knowledge is a bit
stale because I have to spend most of my time dealing with XP.  Also, before
anyone comments on the use of an end of life OS, the only reason I am
currently using F8 instead of Centos 5 is that the onboard NIC (that just
died) wasn't supported in CentOS when I installed F8 (before its end of
life).
        Assuming the NIC isn't natively supported in the Fedora 8 or CentOS
5.3 repo-provided xen kernels, would I be able to somehow use this:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=
4662e82b2cb41c60826e50474dd86dd5c6372b0c with any of the repo-based kernels
(and their kernel-devel headers) to compile a module (and presumably package
it in a subsequent initrd) for the existing kernels?  If so, can anyone
point me toward a good howto on that?  I know I just typed and asked an
awful lot, so to anyone who has read through that mess, and even more so to
anyone that can help, thanks,
        Dustin



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