The Ubuntu 8.04 kernels support the NetXtreme II BCM5709 chips (PCI ID 14e4:163a) but not the BCM5716 (PCI ID 14e4:163b). According to this comment, it's possible to use the BCM5716 with said kernel by merely adding the corresponding PCI ID to the source and recompiling the kernel module (bnx2.ko).

Since Dell R210's contain the BCM5716 chip we needed a workable solution for running Ubuntu 8.04 on these systems. Manually recompiling a kernel module just doesn't seem very practicable - it would have to be recompiled every time a new kernel version is installed (ie: apt-get dist-upgrade). Instead, we created a initramfs hook that patches the existing bnx2 module. This script replaces the PCI ID for the BCM5709 with the PCI ID for the BCM5716 in the bnx2 kernel module. The patched kernel module loads and works nicely on our R210's.

Installation is easy:

• download this file and copy it to /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/bnx2
• mark the file as executable: chmod 755 /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/bnx2
• update the initramdisk for the running kernel: dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`

Closing note: yes, I realize that using sed for patching the kernel module isn't technically sophisticated - but it does the job.

Update: With some help from Jurrit (who left a question about it not working on Debian), we've figured out the Issue on Debian: Debian's modprobe implementation does not prefer kernel modules located in /lib/modules/`uname -r`/updates over kernel modules located elsewhere in the module directory subtree. Thus, I've created a Debian-specific version of this hook.