Bug#650771: r8169 connectivity intermittent, link up messages in syslog

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Robbert Haarman wrote:

> So far (first boot), no problems with the patch from
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1222924

Oh!  I had forgotten about this hunk which is not specific to
RTL_GIGA_MAC_VER_22 from upstream's patch:

| @@ -5804,6 +5812,10 @@ static irqreturn_t rtl8169_interrupt(int irq, void *dev_instance)
|  	 */
|  	status = RTL_R16(IntrStatus);
|  	while (status && status != 0xffff) {
| +		status &= tp->intr_event;
| +		if (!status)
| +			break;
| +
|  		handled = 1;
|
|  		/* Handle all of the error cases first. These will reset

So yes, that is believable.  Which is good news, since the patch will
presumably be part of v3.3 (and maybe part of v3.2, too, depending on
what happens) and could then be backported to squeeze.

> I've tried to stress the system by doing flood pings and downloading
> multiple large files at the same time. Everything has held up so
> far.

Thanks for testing.  Please keep us posted.

Jonathan