Using ubuntu stock kernels on OVH

One of my clients wanted to host his vm’s on OVH. So we ordered a dedicated server and i began to setup XEN on it.

As they depend on a recent ixgbe module i had some problems with the networking, after booting the server with a 3.x stock kernel the ipmi wasn’t working.

This is how it worked for me

* Install latest 4.xx kernel (mine was 4.2.0-34-generic )
* cd /usr/src/
* Download latest ixgbe package: wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000/files/ixgbe%20stable/4.3.13/ixgbe-4.3.13.tar.gz

Now go into the webmanager tool and open a ipmi kvm session.

ovh control panel

* Reboot the server once you are connected to the ipmi

Time to build the new driver
* cd /usr/src/ixgbe-4.xx
* make
* make install

Time to test it
* rmmod ixgbe
* modinfo ixgbe | grep version
You should see something like “version: 4.3.13”

Where the version should match the version of the file you downloaded

If this looks oke, load the module using modprobe

* modprobe ixgbe

you should now have a working internet connection.

Now it’s time to rebuild the initramfs package so the new module is loaded when we reboot the server.

* uname -r
should give you the kernel name, something like “4.2.0-34-generic”

* update-initramfs -k 4.2.0-34-generic -u

reboot and your internet should work.

Posted by Bram

Owner of x-plose. www.X-plose.be. Having fun with chef, icinga, networking