e1000e on linux-2.6-xen
I was frustrated the other day when linux-2.6.18-xen running off XEN did not detect my Intel Pro/1000 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet card, abbrivated as e1000e. The PCIe version of e1000 was not supported yet. I even decided to get a new e1000 PCI for its mistake.
I tried a lot in making it get detected. But the situation did not improve until I was told that Intel maintains its e1000e drivers separately, i,e outside of the kernel sources in sourceforge.net. I obtained the driver source, and compiled it against 2.6.18.8-xen. It compiled without a hitch and I was able to load the kernel module without a problem.
And this is one of the reason XEN sucks – their ‘update’ kernel is 2.6.18.8. Man, its like more than 2 years old. You may ask, why cant they keep it updated. The answer is, its not possible even for them. Its so complicated. So, again, I say XEN sucks. Linux Kernel is gowing so fast, and they are no able to get their stuff along with the same pace. Its simply a lot of work. Why ? Because, XEN is not the right way to do a hypervisor! More rants in future posts! 
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I have the same NIC you have and running XEN 3.1 on a RHEL5.2 I get the following error:
irq 20: nobody cared (try booting with the “irqpoll” option)
[] __report_bad_irq+0×2b/0×69
[] note_interrupt+0×1b3/0×1ec
[] handle_IRQ_event+0×49/0×51
[] __do_IRQ+0×9b/0xd6
[] do_IRQ+0×93/0xae
[] evtchn_do_upcall+0×64/0×9b
[] hypervisor_callback+0×3d/0×48
[] raw_safe_halt+0×8c/0xaf
[] xen_idle+0×22/0×2e
[] cpu_idle+0×91/0xab
[] start_kernel+0×37a/0×381
Where did you see that this device isn’t supported by XEN?
Breno Leitao
July 10, 2008
@Leitao
Looks weird. I don’t know what the stack trace means! You should post in the xen-users mailing lists.
The dom0 you get from xen.org is 2.6.18 based. RedHat should give you a newer one. As of 2.6.18, the e1000e device was not supported by linux at all.
Have you tried to compile the e1000e driver by obtaining the source from sourceforge ?
balajirrao
July 10, 2008