[CentOS] Latest 6.2 kernel is broken

Wed Apr 25 09:40:35 UTC 2012
Peter Kjellström <cap at nsc.liu.se>

On Tuesday 24 April 2012 15.56.09 Lars Hecking wrote:
> Peter Kjellstr??m writes:
> > On Monday 23 April 2012 17.54.33 Lars Hecking wrote:
> > >  I just kickstarted a new machine with the latest CentOS 6.2 files,
> > > 
> > > including kernel 2.6.32-220.13.1.el6.x86_64. It came up without network
> > > interfaces.
> > > 
> > >  dmesg says:
> > > bnx2: Can't load firmware file "bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw"
> > 
> > This is because you have the kmod-bnx2 package which contains a newer
> > driver (2.2.1) but not a complete set of firmwares (two out of five files
> > missing).
>  Looks like a vanilla kernel bug.
> 
>   http://lkml.org/lkml/2012/4/17/268

What you're hitting is similar but not the same. You installed an rpm that 
redhat built for a few new NICs as part of their DUP (Driver Update Program):

 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2012-0503.html

Afaict, they say not to use it for other NICs. In your case a non listed NIC 
broke because that package lacked some firmware.

That is, the problem is crystal clear, bug in the kmod-bnx2 package (but it 
could be claimed to be a documented limitation...).

> > This machine is using the normal bnx2 driver (2.1.11) for which there is a
> > complete set of firmwares (provided by the kernel-firmware package).
> 
>  Spot on - the working machine did not have kmod-bnx2 installed.
> 
> > If you don't need the 2.2.1 driver I suggest you remove the kmod-bnx2
> > package from the first machine and fall back to the driver in the normal
> > kernel package.
> 
>  Installing without kmod-bnx2 worked, and I also had to get rid of
> kmod-cnic, which /tmp/yum.log listed as requiring kmod-bnx2.

"yum remove kmod-bnx2" is suggested way to remove packages in a dependency-
aware way.

/Peter
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