FreeBSD and Intel XL710 Ethernet drivers and malicious driver detection

[Alvin Wong]

We have recently come across what appears to be a driver/firmware problem
with our Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X710-DA2.  Wanted to see
if anyone had insight into whether it was a known bug and if any
fixes/workarounds exist.

Symptoms:  On two FreeBSD 10.2-STABLE r292570 amd64 instances with these
cards -- we experienced packet loss (incrementing packet error counts) at
exactly the same time we observed /var/log/messages such as those below.
Here are the details of our hardware/driver/firmware:

Hardware:

Intel Ethernet Card:
X710DA2
Dual Port, SFP 10GbE,
PCIe 3.0, x8
VendorID:8086,
DvID:1572

FreeBSD Drivers we are running:

# sysctl -a | grep dev.ixl.0.%desc
dev.ixl.0.%desc: Intel(R) Ethernet Connection XL710 Driver, Version - 1.4.3

Intel Firmware we were running:

# sysctl -a | grep dev.ixl.0.fw_version
dev.ixl.0.fw_version: f4.40 a1.4 n04.53 e80001dc0

=== /var/log/messages logs ====

Apr  2 00:45:40 server3 kernel: ixl0: Malicious Driver Detection event 0x02
on TX queue 15 pf number 0x00
Apr  2 00:45:40 server3 kernel: ixl0: MDD TX event is for this function
0x00000001ixl0: Malicious Driver Detection event 0x02 on TX queue 3 pf
number 0x00
Apr  2 00:45:40 server3 kernel: ixl0: MDD TX event is for this function
0x00000001
Apr  2 00:45:41 server3 kernel: ixl0: Malicious Driver Detection event 0x02
on TX queue 12 pf number 0x00
Apr  2 00:45:41 server3 kernel: ixl0: MDD TX event is for this function
0x00000001
Apr  2 00:45:43 server3 kernel: ixl0: Malicious Driver Detection event 0x02
on TX queue 1 pf number 0x00
Apr  2 00:45:43 server3 kernel: ixl0: MDD TX event is for this function
0x00000001
Apr  2 01:12:03 server3 kernel: ixl0: Interface stopped DISTRIBUTING,
possible flapping


And on another box.

Apr  2 02:18:19 server4 kernel: ixl1: Malicious Driver Detection event 0x02
on TX queue 12 pf number 0x01
Apr  2 02:18:19 server4 kernel: ixl1: MDD TX event is for this function
0x00000001
Apr  2 02:18:20 server4 kernel: ixl1: Malicious Driver Detection event 0x02
on TX queue 1 pf number 0x01
Apr  2 02:18:20 server4 kernel: ixl1: MDD TX event is for this function
0x00000001

===

We noticed that the FreeBSD 10.3 RELEASE & even STABLE repositories Intel
IXL drivers are still version 1.4.3 but Intel's download site had 1.4.27
for quite a while now.

Anyone know if there was a reason for discrepancy?

For Intel reps here, should we also upgrade firmware to the latest
dev.ixl.0.fw_version: f5.0 a1.5 n05.02 e80002282 ?

Thanks,
Alvin Wong