Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

This patch includes forcedeth driver 0.6 for ESX 3.5 U4 and resolves the following issue.

nForce Ethernet NIC Loses Connectivity on ESX 3.5

The NVIDIA nForce ethernet chipset might fail to issue interrupts upon completion of packet transmission, resulting in loss of connectivity. Rebooting the host might restore connectivity, but after the server runs for some time, connectivity might be lost again. Error messages similar to the following might be logged in the VMkernel log file:

Jan 1 12:00:00 esx vmkernel: 9:01:01:10.001 cpu1:1200)WARNING: LinNet: 4288: Watchdog timeout for device vmnic0
Jan 1 12:00:00 esx vmkernel: 9:01:01:10.001 cpu1:1200)<6>vmnic0: Got tx_timeout. irq: 00000020
Jan 1 12:00:00 esx vmkernel: 9:01:01:10.001 cpu1:1200)<6>vmnic0: Ring at 6a02800: get 6a02a10 put 6a02a10
Jan 1 12:00:00 esx vmkernel: 9:01:01:10.001 cpu1:1200)<6>vmnic0: Dumping tx registers

Deployment Considerations

None beyond the required patch bundles and reboot information listed in the table, above.

Patch Download and Installation

See the VMware Update Manager Administration Guide for instructions on using Update Manager to download and install patches to automatically update ESX Server 3.5 hosts.

To update ESX Server 3.5 hosts when not using Update Manager, download the most recent patch bundle from http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/vi3_patches_35.html and install the bundle using esxupdate from the command line of the host. For more information, see the ESX Server 3 Patch Management Guide.