# FreeBSD 9 RC3 - nfe0: discard frame without leading ethernet header



## mkmitchell (Dec 22, 2011)

Fresh install of FreeBSD 9 RC3. I have my PC hooked up to a router and I have set up my router to give my machine a static IP address (192.168.1.4).

On startup I get

```
nfe0: discard frame w/o leading ethernet header (len 0 pkt len 0)
```
 This repeats during startup and doesn't stop until I type
[cmd=]ifconfig nfe0 down[/cmd] then [cmd=]ifconfig nfe0 up[/cmd]

Everything works fine. Any suggestions?

Thanks


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## spanglefox (Sep 18, 2013)

I have a similar issue. If I perform a clean boot (from power off) there is no problem. As soon as I reboot the machine I get flooded with these messages on boot. I am using 9.1 p7.


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## SirDice (Sep 18, 2013)

With the same if_nfe(4)?


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## spanglefox (Sep 18, 2013)

Sadly yes. The exact same fix applies too. Take the interface down and bring it back up again and the device is ready for use. I tried to see if I could make a quick login script (well via /etc/csh.login) to take down and put back up but that sadly didn't work for the standard user.


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## kpa (Sep 18, 2013)

The nfe(4) driver is buggy, I have seen similar behaviour on a machine I built for a friend. Sometimes just replugging the cable cured the problems.


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## spanglefox (Sep 18, 2013)

I am getting that impression too from what I could ascertain from the Internet. Maybe a quick'n'dirty Â£5 network card is needed and disable the troublesome card in the BIOS.


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## Caleb (Nov 22, 2015)

If anyone stumbles upon this I came up with kind of a hacky solution, anyway
Just add the attached file to /etc/ so /etc/rc.local is what it should look like...
It will restart the netif service on boot, so even if it the nfe driver goes crazy it should always come back online with in a few seconds.


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