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