RTL-8169 Gigabit PCMCIA only goes at 100 half duplex

gozza11 · 05-07-2006, 09:55 AM

A long time ago the ethernet port on my laptop died causing me to buy a netgear gigabit pcmcia ethernet adapter using the rtl-8169 realtek chip.

since then the card only works well on kernel 2.4 versions. slackware worked without a hitch. the problem is ofcourse that i need a newer 2.6 kernel for fancy laptop extras.

when i went lfs i couldnt use any driver for the card except the one downloaded at the realtek website: module r1000.

any other driver slows down the laptop causing the kernel to loose ticks. i have tried slax and knoppix and both experience the same problem, only the older kernel doesnt.

when running module r1000 however everything is fine except that it is stuck at 100mbps half duplex. forcing it to use 1000mbps full duplex doesnt work as shown below

Code:

modprobe r1000 media=0x10

dmesg | grep eth0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.0[A] -> Link [LNKD] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
eth0: Identified chip type is 'RTL8169SB/8110SB'.
eth0: r10001.02, the Linux device driver for Realtek Ethernet Controllers at 0x4000, 00:0f:b5:4d:83:1e, IRQ 11
eth0: Force-mode Enabled.
This Realtek NIC doesn't support 1000Mbps
eth0: 100Mbps Half-duplex operation.
Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter
Driver version:1.02
Released date:2006/02/23
Link Status:Not Linked
I/O Base:0x4000(I/O port)
IRQ:11

even though it says its not supported forcing 100mbps full duplex returns no error and still falls back to half duplex.

ethtool doesnt work at all giving me a permission denied error message. I am at a complete loss here.

i will try building a spanking new kernel and give the drivers in there a whirl but it seems doubtfull. whats more bizare is that a have similar cards on my desktop that work fine. might just be a pcmcia problem for the linux driver.

any help is greatly appreciated

thanks
goran sterjov

Linux.tar.gz · 05-07-2006, 09:40 PM

Did you tried the r8169 kernel module?

gozza11 · 05-07-2006, 11:30 PM

yea, i have just tried it on the newest kernel, 2.6.16.14. I still get the same slow down problems on 2.16.15.4 which is strange because they are not that far apart leaving me to conclude that it was the kernel configuration not the driver causing the problem.

I have however made success with the module r8169. managed to get full duplex at 100 going.

ethtool claims that 1000baseT/full is supported but only 100baseT/full is advertised. could this be the problem.
no changes with ethtool is accepted, not even autoneg off.

forgot to add ethtool output

Code:

ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
        Supported ports: [ TP ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  100baseT/Full
        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
        Speed: 100Mb/s
        Duplex: Full
        Port: Twisted Pair
        PHYAD: 0
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: on
        Supports Wake-on: pumbg
        Wake-on: g
        Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)
        Link detected: yes

thanks for your time
goran sterjov

Linux.tar.gz · 05-08-2006, 08:04 AM

Are you sure that your access point is 10/100/1000?

Well, to make the pain less hard, your laptop will probably never needs 1000, as it faaaaar exceed the ouput/input of your harddrive. But having full duplex is a good thing.
As Andrew Morton said, the 2.6 bugs number increase and he thinks about making one release cycle only about fixing bugs:
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14537

gozza11 · 05-08-2006, 08:46 PM

lol, yea, it supports 1000, i even managed to get it to advertise all its supported modes also. still cant change anything with ethtool though.

i suppose your right about not needing the speed. i just bought it because i need an ethernet adapter so i figured why not pay 10 dollars extra for a gigabit.

would be nice to get all green lights on my switch though instead of an ugly orange one indicating 100mbps

i will keep at it. maybe even drop back to 2.4 installing slackware or debian. lfs was a a lot of fun but i grow tired of constantly building from source tedious dependencies. maybe gentoo can be of some assistance.

thanks anyway.
goran

Linux.tar.gz · 05-09-2006, 07:41 AM

When you build from source, you can use the program named checkinstall instead of doing make install. Then you can keep the package generated, and re-use it on some reinstallation, or on another machine. The advantage of Slackware's .tgz is it's only a zipped archive, and you can use it on any other Linux distro.