Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1

We have an important announcement regarding openSUSE 11.1 beta 1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 beta 1:

The Intel e1000e driver on openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Beta 1 might have a serious issue with the potential to damage the network card in a way that it cannot be used any longer.

Intel and Novell are currently working to analyze and solve the issue.

For the time being:

Please do NOT USE:

openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 or SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Beta 1

on systems with Intel e1000e hardware.

Any other hardware, including systems with Intel e1000 (without -e) network cards, is not affected by this issue.

We will keep you posted. Please watch news.opensuse.org and the opensuse-announce mailing list for more information.

Update: Check this page for a list of devices that use the e1000e driver. It may not be an exhaustive list. If you have an Intel PCI Express PRO/1000 gigabit Ethernet card, it uses the e1000e driver and you should avoid booting or using beta 1. Intel has instructions on how to identify your card.