"Unsupported module type was detected" during boot of Intel X520/I350 card in Dell PowerEdge R630

Solution 1:

This Intel NIC does have an on-device whitelist of SFP+ modules it will accept, but it is possible to disable this and attempt to use whatever SFP+ module you want. You need to pass the ixgbe module parameter allow_unsupported_sfp=1.

You can test whether this will work by unloading and reloading the module with the option given:

# rmmod ixgbe
# modprobe ixgbe allow_unsupported_sfp=1

The usual way to make this persistent is to add the module option to a file such as /etc/modprobe.d/ixgbe.conf and then run sudo update-initramfs on Debian based systems or sudo dracut -f on Red Hat based systems. The content of that file would be:

options ixgbe allow_unsupported_sfp=1

It can also be added to the kernel command line at boot, i.e.: ixgbe.allow_unsupported_sfp=1 so that you can use it in an installation environment.