Serious, potentially hardware-damaging e1000e driver issue on Intrepid

[Steve Langasek]

Dear developers,

Reports have been coming in that the e1000e ethernet driver for Intel GigE
chipsets, as included upstream in Linux 2.6.27, may under certain conditions
irreparably damage your ethernet hardware by corrupting the on-board
firmware.

While we expect alphas to include a fair number of bugs, and rely on your
continued support and testing to help resolve these bugs for Ubuntu
releases, bugs that damage hardware are quite another matter.  As a result
of this bug we must recommend that users do *not* use Intrepid alphas,
including the LiveCDs, on machines with Intel GigE ethernet.

Efforts to safeguard the hardware of affected users are ongoing, though
initially this will consist of a workaround in the form of disabling the
e1000e driver.  Alpha 6 CD images will not be re-issued for this fix, so
affected users are advised to either use daily CD images once a resolution
is in place, or to wait for the release of the 8.10 beta, due to be released
on October 2.

Further discussion of this issue can be found on the ubuntu-devel mailing
list at
<https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-September/026559.html>,
and progress on resolving this issue can be tracked at
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/263555>.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org