On Sun, 2013-10-13 at 00:20 -0600, Shawn Heisey wrote: > 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. I think you're confused about this. - There is no firmware patch for your LAN-on-motherboard chip (RTL8168B). - There is a firmware patch for the chip on the PCIe card (RTL8168D), but this was never included in the driver in Debian kernels (except in some experimental versions). The firmware files are patches to the PHY firmware on newer chips that generally improve link stability. The driver can and does work without them (since 2.6.32-3) but the chip will be less likely to maintain a stable gigabit link if the requested patch is not available. Which is why I asked... Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. - Donald Knuth
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