Am 10.11.2011 13:54, schrieb onlyjob:
Dear Kai,well, then what is different and why can't that be upstreamed? And is there a known case, where the driver provided by Debian doesn't work (if so, is there a bug filed)?Perhaps you are right, given the time and the skills and the hardware and the person skilled and motivated enough it can be upstreamed. Ideally it should be. I'm afraid I don't fit for such job: I can't meet you high expectations since I might not have enough time, skills, right hardware, etc. Let's see what Patrick Matthäi is going to tell since he is apparently have a problematic hardware in his possession.
r8169 "works", but I get approx every 5 minutes timeouts of one minute (where the whole NIC does not work) or I have got a package loss around 50% and it is quite slow. This is an older known problem in Debian, just search for "r8168 r8169 debian" on google.
Don't get me wrong: I love alternatives, but I don't see their value when it comes to device drivers.That's probably because you can afford it due to lack of problematic hardware on your hands. For those who are not as lucky as you and me it might be more difficult. At least we already have one person who might need solution right now.
;)I just get that new NIC with my new mainboard, a Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3-AM3. Since I just have got this hardware since 1-2 weeks, I didn't searched for other solutions, but r8168 works.
btw: Linux 3.0 and 3.1 didn't worked.
Apparently we have a philosophical problem here: given the fact that nether you nor me can benefit from having the alternative driver it will be over-generalization for us to say that nobody can and therefore don't give them a chance. We're not talking about mandatory driver so alternative might be good for someone. Of course it would be perfect to have one 100% working driver in kernel so all those troubles won't be necessary at all. I believe it will be like this, eventually.
There was a "fix" for this problem in stable linux-2.6:
2.6.32-36:
* r8169: Backport changes up to Linux 3.0.2 (Closes: #627704)
- Fix support for RTL8102E and RTL8168DP
- Add support for RTL8105E, RTL8168E and another variant of RTL8168DP
- Add support for D-Link DGE-530T rev C1
But yeah as I told, 3.0 and 3.1 have got the same problems with my NIC.
Cheers.