Re: Onboard rtl8139 works in 2.2 kernel but not in 2.4 kernel, please help
Jonathan Matthews wrote:
On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 11:07:10AM -0500, Fraser Campbell wrote:
Hi,
[snip rtl8139 problems]
No idea if this is feasible here, but my favourite way of solving 8139
problems is to put a decent nic in the box (Intel EtherExpress, Tulip,
LinkSys - maybe, etc.) and ignore the PoS RTL.
Seriously - drop £20-30 on a well thought-out nic and you'll not go far
wrong :-)
Sorry if that's not a possibility in this case, but it's the simplest
and best way to deal with it!
Cheers,
jc
I have lost the OP's message, so I will reply to this one instead in the
hopes it gets seen.
Over the last 4-5 months of monitoring this list, I have seen a
"handfull" of complaints like this involving various NICs. IIRC, most
of them have involved the RTL 8139 chipset but I could be wrong on this.
Usually it works OK in the 2.2.XX kernels, but doesn't work in the
2.4.XX kernels. This "problem" isn't universal to all MotherBoards and
NIC combos...i.e. I am running the 2.4.19 kernel here (from Debian) and
a RTL8139 NIC with the 8139too module w/o problems!
There have been several "solutions" posted... you might want to search
the past few months of Debian-User on the topic "APIC". I can't find a
specific one right now, so here is what I recall off the top of my head:
1. Try turning APIC "off" in the BIOS if you can. It seems that if the
BIOS pre-configures it, then the kernel can become "confused", and has
been reported to lock the system at boot-time.
2. Try passing the command "append=noapic" to the kernel via LILO (edit
/etc/lilo.conf and add this line).
3. Recompile your kernel and turn off APIC support.
Dunno if this is your problem, but the first two "solutions" look pretty
easy to try if you can... I am using the RTL8139 chipset here on about
4 different machines, using different 2.4.XX kernels w/o problems of any
kind.
HTH,
-Don Spoon-
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