# How to install new ethernet driver?



## tolin (Dec 14, 2011)

Hi gents, 

New to freebsd FreeBSD. I'm using an older stable FreeBSD 8.0 codebase and would like to upgrade an ixgbe driver to a newer revision to fix some of the bugs that I've been seeing. Prefer to just patch the driver instead of updating the whole kernel. What's the best way to do this? 

I believe that if we just take the latest ixgbe files from the repository there could be dependencies outside of the ixgbe directory that could break. Are these driver changes available as a standalone patch? 

The ixgbe version is currently 1.17.2.2.2.1, and it looks like the latest version I should go to is 1.17.2.19.  I'm guessing I shouldn't use 1.55 since that seems to be for the FreeBSD 9 branch. 

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe.c

Thanks.


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## SirDice (Dec 15, 2011)

Update to 8.2, 8.0 has been end-of-life for more then a year.


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## mix_room (Dec 15, 2011)

Updates using [cmd=""]freebsd-update[/cmd] are generally very easy. They do not require compiling from source. There is really no reason, at least from a simplicity perspective, not to update.


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