Why does a modprobe of the bnx2x driver in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 fail with memory allocation errors?

Release Found: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 (32bit only)

Problem

This is a known issue in the 32bit version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7. When the bnx2x driver is loaded for a BMC57710 10Base-T NIC, the module fails to load citing virtual memory allocation errors. Therefore, any Broadcom based 10GBase-T network cards will not work on these systems.

Work Around

This problem can be alleviated by adding the following parameter "vmalloc=256MB" to the kernel boot line in the system's /boot/grub/grub.conf line. 128MB of additional lowmem address space will be used, but on most systems this will not be an issue.

Solution

This issue does not occur in the 64bit version of the OS. The fix for the 32bit issue requires an updated driver, which is targeted for release in the kernel that will ship with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8. For details on this issue, please contact Red Hat Support.