[SOLVED] Realtek driver issues, solved, FYI

JamesGT · 02-11-2012, 10:53 AM

Not sure how many people have this issue, or if it's been discussed, but with my new system (Asrock A75 Extreme6), it has a RealTek onboard nic. Slackware detects it as an R8169 and uses that driver, when it should use the R8168b driver.

My log showed constant "link up" messages in the logs, sometimes as often as every 5 or 10 seconds.

I found this info to remove the R8169 driver and install the R8168b driver.

Download r8168B driver:

Code:

wget http://www.foxhop.net/attachment/r8168-8.023.00.tar.bz2
tar vjxf r8168-8.023.00.tar.bz2

Remove r8169 driver:

Code:

rmmod r8169

Now install the downloaded r8168B driver:

Code:

cd r8168-8.023.00
./autorun.sh

load the r8168 driver:

Code:

modprobe r8168

Blacklist the r8169 driver to prevent it from loading again.

Code:

echo "blacklist r8169" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Now verify that the r8168B driver has been loaded and is in use now:

Code:

lsmod | grep r8168

I've had zero problems since following this. Just thought I'd pass it along for other AMD A8/Realtek NIC users.

H_TeXMeX_H · 02-11-2012, 12:21 PM

Thanks for the info.

JamesGT · 10-17-2012, 08:03 PM

Recently I upgraded to Slackware 14, which still uses the R8169 driver for my NIC. Although better than before, it still have some issues so I reverted back to the R8168 driver. Updating is now easier if you need to use the R8168 driver.

You can go here...

http://code.google.com/p/r8168/

Download the r8168-8.032.00.tar.bz2 driver, extract all the files then run autorun.sh and it will do all the work for you.

Restart your network, or reboot, and automagically the driver is installed.