I have my head down with exams atm and suddenly find myself embarrassed for this card. The module r8169 finds it and loads, but doesn't talk to anything.

I have kernel 3-8-8. I heard it was fixed in kernel 3.11, and also that it wasn't for some cards anyhow.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...es-4175482566/

Anyone up to date with it?

I just came across this post from jtsn.

1 members found this post helpful.

I'm using it on my home server/workstation with kernel-3.12.6 and seems to work fine: I haven't tried with the stock 3.10.17 kernel.

Thanks for the replies guys.

@ponce: Duly noted about kernel 3.12.6. It seems you have rev 06, and I have rev09 of the card (lcpci -n reports 10ec:8168) I'll go there asap.

@Didier I tried that driver this morning. It wants asm/system.h and is very insistent about it. I even tried fooling it with some other system.h but it wouldn't have it. I gather I have to go back to 2.x kernels for that. Somebody needs to tell Realtek. Thanks for the post, though. It was worth checking.

I can probably load the system with a fedora kernel if I get desperate. I ran fedora on the slackware kernel often.

Looks like it's worth another kernel compile, so. What took them so long? I'll have to go at that kernel and build it for myself here. Thanks.

You tried the wrong Realtek driver: r8169 6.017.00. That thing is unmaintained and for a different very old PCI NIC controller and doesn't support your PCIe NIC.

You need r8168 8.037. It compiles without modifications on Linux 3.10.17 included with Slackware 14.1. You also need to blacklist and remove the preinstalled r8169.ko from /lib/modules.

Long story short:

r8169 (from Linux 3.x) doesn't work with RTL8168/8111. It tries to, but fails. I think it's maintained by someone, who doesn't have the real thing (hardware) available for driver development and testing. It mostly works with a RTL8169 PCI card (I have one for testing), but's also slow and network throughput isn't great.

r8169 (from Realtek) doesn't work in your case. It is for RTL8169 and won't even detect you NIC, it's for the PCI card. (I attached a patch to make that driver compile on Linux 3.10 for the case someone needs that.)

r8168 (from Realtek) should work flawlessly and deliver wire-speed.

Attached Files

r8169-6.017.00.diff.txt (1.5 KB, 52 views)

I have rev 02 of the Realtek 8169 NIC and it's working ok for me on the 3.10 kernel.

Of course it is. It's a different (very old) chip with a parallel PCI interface.

OK. Sorted.

I built the module (which built painlessly - thx Didier) and installed it umpteen times. It transpires that somehow I had _compiled_in_ the r8169 module :-//.
Kernel rebuilds are less painful on SSD. Now I'm going. The module is r8168.ko but identifies as r8169.ko in lspci anyhow which is unnerving.

No, r8168 just didn't get loaded, because udev prefers r8169.ko. You must blacklist r8169 or remove the module.

There _is_no_r8169.ko. I had to recompile the kernel (because it was compiled in) and I left it out.
The situation is tetotally weird. r8168 is in place, and the card now works, which is powerful evidence for that.
lsmod |grep r816* shows a blank - no r8168 or r8169 :-O. Even just 'lsmod' and picking through draws a blank.
grepping modules.dep only shows the r8168
Yet lspci-v reports (with or without a connection on it)

The Slackware kernel doesn't have r8169 compiled in. You're still using the compiled-in r8169 and for whatever reason it now works. lspci doesn't lie about that. Just look at /sys/module/r8169/version.

I am on kernel 3.8.8-6 - my sixth build from the 3.8.8 source./sys/module/r8169/ exists. Grepping the kernel config for r8169
not much there. Modules.dep
As I mentioned, lsmod draws a blank on it also. I think r8169 isn't there, jtsn. The output of lspci -v is strange, I'll admit. The card never worked with r8169, and it works now. Can we leave this one here?

Welcome to the club!!
Regards