Updating linux-headers-aws breaks ixgbevf

Question

When I attempt to update linux-headers-aws on my instance, it becomes unconnectable after restart. Diffing the AWS system log from the console, I found:

ixgbevf: disagrees about version of symbol module_layout

Do I need to reinstall ixgbevf? Should I avoid updating in this manner?

Pre-update:

uname -a

Linux master 4.4.0-1022-aws #31-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 27 11:27:55 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

modinfo ixgbevf

modinfo ixgbevf filename:
/lib/modules/4.4.0-1022-aws/updates/dkms/ixgbevf.ko version:
3.1.2 license: GPL description: Intel(R) 10 Gigabit Virtual Function Network Driver author: Intel Corporation, srcversion: BA90EAFD4DC7D0F8F47AB8D alias: pci:v00008086d000015A8svsdbcsci* alias:
pci:v00008086d00001565svsdbcsci* alias:
pci:v00008086d00001515svsdbcsci* alias:
pci:v00008086d000010EDsvsdbcsci* depends: vermagic:
4.4.0-1022-aws SMP mod_unload modversions parm: InterruptThrottleRate:Maximum interrupts per second, per vector, (956-488281, 0=off, 1=dynamic), default 1 (array of int)

ethtool -i ens3

driver: ixgbevf version: 3.1.2 firmware-version: N/A expansion-rom-version: bus-info: 0000:00:03.0 supports-statistics: yes supports-test: yes supports-eeprom-access: no supports-register-dump: yes supports-priv-flags: no

Answer 1

See this gist

First I created a backup AMI and unheld these packages:

sudo apt-mark unhold linux-aws
sudo apt-mark unhold linux-headers-aws
sudo apt-mark unhold linux-image-aws
sudo apt-mark unhold lxd
sudo apt-mark unhold lxd-client

Then updated:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-aws linux-image-aws

This ran successfully:

Setting up linux-headers-aws (4.4.0.1026.29) ...
Setting up linux-aws (4.4.0.1026.29) ...

Several attempts to reboot at this point rendered my AMI unconnectable with the error message in the system log documented in my question. So I re-downloaded ixgbevf according to the AWS documentation and re-installed, commenting out the version check line to allow compilation (#if UTS_UBUNTU_RELEASE_ABI > 255). This required that I first uninstall the existing ixgbevf-3.1.2 module:

sudo dkms remove ixgbevf/3.1.2 --all
sudo dkms add -m ixgbevf -v 3.1.2
sudo dkms build -m ixgbevf -v 3.1.2
sudo dkms install -m ixgbevf -v 3.1.2 --all
sudo update-initramfs -c -k all
sudo reboot

And I was then able to successfully connect.