Bug#514268: linux-source-2.6.26: Realtek network card driver (r8169) doesn't handle multicast
Package: linux-source-2.6.26
Version: 2.6.26-13
Severity: important
Hardware involved:
RealTek RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Debugging info:
Module r8169 allows the card to operate fine, however close inspection
of the interface statistics immediately show _lots_ of dropped packages
while completely ignoring multicast frames (after a couple of hours of
use in an otherwise quiescent network, I had 2 and a half _billion_
dropped RX packets). I noticed the error while trying to make Avahi work,
and then tested other multicast applications to no avail. So I fired up
tcpdump, and once the interface was set into promiscuous mode, the
multicast packets were properly handled (and the dropped package count
stopped for that little while too).
Using an alternate interface everything works perfectly.
I'm reporting the problem on i686 but it also happens with amd64.
I believe this is a known bug for 2.6.26 that has been fixed in 2.6.27.
I will build a custom kernel and give feedback as soon as I can.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
APT prefers lenny
APT policy: (500, 'lenny')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
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