FC6, Realtek 8168, installed rpm, now what?
 

Hi,

So I just installed Fedora Core 6 on my PC and my onboard network card isn't workin.
It is a Realtek 8168, and so I found an rpm for this on freshrpms.net: http://zod.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=738

Now I installed the RPM without any errors, and I can see that it is installed in the RPM list. Then I rebooted just to make sure that it was loaded into the kernel before I tried to install the network card again.
But when I try to choose my network card during the wizard, Configure Network Adapter, it isn't showing up on the list.

Did I forget to do something?
I tried modprobe r1000 and r8168 and they both showed an error:
"FATAL: Module rxxx not present"

All help is greatly appreciated,
Thanks Jesper

Hi

I've got this exact same NIC and also FC6.

I could not get it to work right - I did get it partially working.

There is a driver on the Realtek site that you can download - the filename is r1000_v1.05.tgz - and once you have that, you extract it and do

./configure
make
make install

Then, you need to load the resulting module - look for a file with the .ko extension in the driver's directory tree. Load is by doing

insmod modulename.ko

as root.

This will install the module that drives the NIC. To make the NIC appear in your system do

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 192.254.255.20 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.254.255.255 up

This should "create" the eth0 device you need for networking connectivity. From here you just need to setup DNS and a gateway and your networking should be up on that box using the 8168.

However, there are issues - this driver does NOT work reliably for the 2.6.18.1 kernel, at least on my GA-945-PL-S3 motherboard. I would get it working for about ten minutes, then it would fail and refuse to accept or send anything. I had to reset it repeatedly, and it kept failing randomly. Eventually I gave up getting the 8168 to work with Linux (the driver from Realtek appears buggy) and I put in an old PCI 8139 card that has a native kernel driver. Works fine...

Feel free to mail me at spamnot@<removethis>polard.com if you want the driver file. I also got a newer driver from Realtek when I complained that the one available for download does not work for me, but I haven't been able to test it yet. I'll be happy to send both to you if you want.

Regards,

not what I was looking for
 

Hey Rylan76,

Thanks for the advice, but this wasn't really what I was looking for. I tried the thing with the drivers from the Realtek website and that wasn't really succesful.

I am actually looking for advice on how to make these RPMs to work,

Thanks,
Jesper