Fixing Intel e1000e NIC Failures on Proxmox
“When the network dies at 2am, you learn to love ethtool. And kernel pinning. And backups.” - Homelab incident retrospective
“Game over, man! Game over!” - Aliens. When the NIC goes dark mid-backup, it feels that way. But there’s a fix. Proxmox hosts with Intel I217/I219 NICs (e1000e driver) can lose network connectivity under load. Backups freeze. VMs go dark. Unplugging and replugging the cable sometimes brings it back. This is a kernel regression - not your hardware.