Enable Built-in Intel 82579 Based Ethernet Card in Intel DH61WW Motherboard under Ubuntu 10.04 Server LTS

August 7, 2011

82579 based Ethernet network cards are only supported in Kernel 2.6.36 and up, thus Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will not have out-of-the-box support for the network card. I needed this to work since I’ll be using this as my server and 11.04 is not LTS, I have no choice. To fix this with the motherboard I have from Intel, here are the steps that I did…

1. Download the driver source from Intel driver webpage here, or the latest one they have. Double check if the driver supports the version of the network card, the one I have is 82579.
2. Ready the Ubuntu server, install make gcc g++ and linux headers

   aptitude install make gcc g++ linux-headers-`uname -r`

3. Un-pack the src driver that you just downloaded, compile and install.

   gunzip [filename].tar.gz
   tar -xvf [filename].tar
   cd [folder_name]/src
   make install

4. If everything goes well, no error should come out, then enable your new ethernet card.

   modprobe e1000e

5. You can check your new network card via ifconfig
   Enjoy!

Note: If you update your kernel or linux image via aptitude safe-upgrade or dist-upgrade, you need to remove the e1000e module, re-compile the driver and install the newly compiled driver again.

Posted in Linux, Mods, Tips & Tricks