When an unsupported SFP transceiver is connected to an Intel ethernet controller, the network interface will no longer appear for many system commands. Here are the known symtoms for this issue:
- The affected network interface will not pass any traffic
- The connected switch will not see the MAC address for the affected network interface via LLDP neighbor discovery
- /var/log/messages shows an error that ixgbe "failed to load because an unsupported SFP+ module type was detected" or a similar message
- Running ifconfig on the specific interface (i.e. ifconfig eth0) will give a "Device not found" error
- The affected MAC address field in the 'nsc_hwtst.sh -i' output is empty
- The output of 'lspci | grep -i net' shows the expected number of ethernet controllers for the specific model (i.e. two lines for a NSC-T48R-STND-DAC-SFP)
To address this, there are two possible solutions:
- Swap out the unsupported transceiver for one that is supported. Note that this article assumes a recent Nodegrid OS version is installed: What SFP transceivers are supported by Nodegrid appliances?
- Upgrade the affected system to a Nodegrid OS version which supports the SFP transceiver being used. This will require USB initiated upgrade when no other network connection is available: Nodegrid Boot from USB media