After updating, errors on e1000 virtual NICs

[markwhi]

After updating proxmox-ve today I am seeing a very large error rate on e1000 virtual interfaces in qemu VMs. Switching to VirtIO seems to resolve the errors but is not a long-term solution. Did something change recently with e1000 support in qemu?

markc@rproxy-01:~$ dmesg|grep eth0
[ 1.159497] e1000 0000:00:12.0: eth0: (PCI:33MHz:32-bit) 32:5f:13:ca:3f:92
[ 1.159506] e1000 0000:00:12.0: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection

markc@rproxy-01:~$ netstat -i
Kernel Interface table
Iface MTU Met RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
eth0 1500 0 16228479 1028559 0 0 15681363 0 0 0 BMRU
lo 16436 0 2210 0 0 0 2210 0 0 0 LRU

 

[markwhi]

Version info:

# pveversion --verbose
proxmox-ve: 4.1-34 (running kernel: 4.2.6-1-pve)
pve-manager: 4.1-13 (running version: 4.1-13/cfb599fb)
pve-kernel-2.6.32-37-pve: 2.6.32-150
pve-kernel-4.2.6-1-pve: 4.2.6-36
pve-kernel-2.6.32-43-pve: 2.6.32-166
pve-kernel-2.6.32-34-pve: 2.6.32-140
pve-kernel-2.6.32-26-pve: 2.6.32-114
lvm2: 2.02.116-pve2
corosync-pve: 2.3.5-2
libqb0: 1.0-1
pve-cluster: 4.0-32
qemu-server: 4.0-55
pve-firmware: 1.1-7
libpve-common-perl: 4.0-48
libpve-access-control: 4.0-11
libpve-storage-perl: 4.0-40
pve-libspice-server1: 0.12.5-2
vncterm: 1.2-1
pve-qemu-kvm: 2.5-5
pve-container: 1.0-44
pve-firewall: 2.0-17
pve-ha-manager: 1.0-21
ksm-control-daemon: 1.2-1
glusterfs-client: 3.5.2-2+deb8u1
lxc-pve: 1.1.5-7
lxcfs: 0.13-pve3
cgmanager: 0.39-pve1
criu: 1.6.0-1
fence-agents-pve: not correctly installed
openvswitch-switch: 2.3.2-2

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,
Why is this virtio no long term solution?
It is para-visualized so you should prefer virtio and not e1000.
What Os do you use on the VM?

 

[markwhi]

After investigating it looks like virtio will probably work. I had concerns about some of my BSD guests.

Still, these errors are new with the upgrade and I'd like to understand what's caused them and how to resolve them.

Thanks.

 

[hakim]

I noticed the same kind of problem using e1000 NIC (on a KVM vm) : I had about 1/3 of my packets with error (in Proxmox 4), and I did not have this kind of problem with Proxmox 3.4.
Using Virtio NIC instead was a solution for me, but there is apparently a problem with the e1000 driver (which is default NIC proposed by Proxmox when creating a new VM).