Bug#726142: Info received (Bug#726142: Realtek NIC (r8169 driver) won't work at gigabit speed, must be forced to 100MB)

[Shawn Heisey <debian@elyograg.org>]

I left out the answer to one of your questions.  Yes, the
firmware-realtek package is installed.  It is version 0.28+squeeze1.
During my temporary 3.2 backports kernel experiment, I also upgraded all
the firmware packages to the matching version from backports.

This may be indirectly significant - in the 2.6.30 kernel version where
everything worked on auto, I did not need a firmware package.  I don't
know if this is because a blob wasn't being used, or if that was before
Debian had completely moved such blobs out of main.  I was able to
install lenny without putting the firmware on a flash disk.

Starting sometime after 2.6.30, the firmware package is required or the
NIC doesn't work at all.