mystery solved: MSI-PCI Interrupts weren't triggered... (/proc/interrupts showed always zero interrupts), and the frame statistics are updated through a kernel- timer-invoked update-function by reading NIC internal registers holding the required statistics data...
by compililing the driver with "make CFLAGS_EXTRA=-DDISABLE_PCI_MSI" and therefore falling back to 'IO-APIC' interrupts, frames started to show up in the network stack :-) so now it seems to me, that it's just a matter of incomplete/broken MSI support with the involved chipsets... :-/ -- e1000 driver not working properly on x86_64? https://launchpad.net/bugs/56885 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
