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Bug#537625: linux-image-2.6.26-2-amd64: RealTek r8111c NIC chipset not supported



dann frazier wrote:
(Readding the bug to the CC list)

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 08:54:28PM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:
dann frazier wrote:
On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 06:05:39PM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:
Package: linux-image-2.6.26-2-amd64
Version: 2.6.26-17
Severity: normal

The RealTek 8111c chipset, frequently used in mainboards from many
manufacturers, is not supported in the 2.6.26 kernel. I've tried the
Ubuntu 9.04 distro and it does work with their 2.6.28 kernel. RealTek
offer the source for a Linux driver on their web site that, according to
some reports I've seen re. getting it to work with earlier Ubuntu
versions, works back to at least kernel 2.6.24.

I'd compile the module but aptitude reports problems getting everything
I need. SO for now I'm using an old Linksys 10/100 USB Ethernet adapter.
It looks like the r8169 module got loaded for your device:

r8169                  31492  0
What problem are you seeing with it?

The 8111c doesn't use the r8169 driver. It uses the r8168. However, neither one seems to detect the onboard 8111c NIC on bootup. and the /etc/network directory doesn't seem to contain anything

The r8169 source looks like it is intended to work with that the pci
ids in your report, and the driver did appear to have claimed your
device:
   Kernel driver in use: r8169

It might be interesting to see the output of 'dmesg' that shows the
r8169 driver loading. The messages in your original report are missing
the output from the first 11s after boot.

Did you try 2.6.30? I know r8168 isn't there, but it would be
interesting to know if r8169 from that kernel works.

As for r8168 - it isn't upstream, so isn't a candidate for inclusion
in the linux-2.6 package. It would be possible for someone to package
it as a separate out of tree module package, see the RFP process here:
 http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

I've now compiled the r8168 from the Realtek site and I can manually configure the network to work (as is evidenced by this e-mail). I'm just trying to work my way through the various documents to make it permanent.

Apparently putting it into modules isn't sufficient. The Realtek documentation unfortunately only gives instructions for RedHat and Suse, neither of which are applicable to Debian. It's been a while since I had to manually configure the network settings and things seem to have changed a lot. The KDE 4.2 GUI tools don't help at all - they just generate an error message about not being able to parse an XML file.

Try interfaces(5)


I'll put the r8169 driver back tonight and let you know what I find.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned earlier, the 2.6.30 kernel gave me the same
results as the 2.6.26 did - a failure to bring up the interface.

re. interfaces: as near as I can tell, the interfaces file is correct
(not a network expert). It's the one that brought up the NIC on my
previous mainboard and successfully brings up the USB ethernet adapter
when I plug it in. When I manually do an ifconfig -a however, the
onboard NIC gets added as eth1, even though there is no eth0.



# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
mapping eth0
       script grep
       map eth0

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth0





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