I had an issue where, after booting, linux would sometimes only see 3 interfaces rather than the usual 4.
In an attempt to fix the issue, I have updated the card to the latest firmware using the EFI nvm update tool from the Intel website.
This seemed to work fine, however on boot, the BIOS (of the Intel server motherboard) takes me to the boot log in setup to say there has been a fatal error with the OPROM of the NIC (error code 0147).
If I then continue to boot to Linux, all interfaces are present and appear to be working.
My thoughts are:
Perhaps upgrading the NIC firmeware has not also updated the EFI OPROM of the NIC and so now there is a mismatch? (I can't see any evidence of a separate update on the Intel website).
Some incompatibility of the newly updated NIC firmware (including new EFI OPROM) with the EFI BIOS of the motherboard?
Any ideas?