Changing driver for motherboard mounted NIC (Realtek 8169 to 8168)

Thoht · 2008-03-04 20:37:03

Hey there.

I'm back from Ubuntu attempting to install Archlinux again, and this time I've found a way to bypass the weblogin necessary for Internet access from my ISP by purchasing a simple DLink DIR-100 router. However, my network connection is extremely jumpy I have come to notice, and there's no saying wether DHCP will work or not. In Ubuntu I managed to resolve the issue by downgrading the driver for my motherboard mounted Realtek 8111 NIC from 8169 to 8168, however I'm struggling to do this in Archlinux.

Is it possible to select the 8168 driver during install?

Thoht · 2008-03-05 18:25:56

I'm really eager to get into Arch... Is it possible to download an old .iso where the 8168 driver is default? Or can I add it to an .iso myself somehow? I already tried other possible solutions such as FaunOS, but it comes with the 8169 too... In fact, I suppose most distributions do come to think of it. I tried mounting a simple USB drive too where I had put the driver, but Arch found the ext3 system invalid for some reason, and now I can't reformat the drive in Ubuntu.

Please help me out, thanks.

tigrmesh · 2008-03-06 18:35:15

Welcome back!

There are some old .iso's here: ftp://mir1.archlinuxfr.org/archlinux/.

Thoht · 2008-03-06 18:39:37

tigrmesh wrote:

Welcome back!
There are some old .iso's here: ftp://mir1.archlinuxfr.org/archlinux/.

Thank you!

Thoht · 2008-03-07 21:40:34

Well I got Arch up and running along with X, although not yet ALSA, by using the latest .iso. I downloaded an old one, but the installation screwed up a bit, and I ran out of empty DVDs. Still, I got the source for the r8168-8.005.00 driver, and would like to replace the r8169 with it, but what do I do?

On Ubuntu I did it like this (after extracting of course):

> sudo mv r8168 /usr/src/
> cd /usr/src/r8168
> sudo make clean modules
> sudo make install
> sudo depmod -a
> sudo insmod ./src/r8168.ko
> lsmod | grep r8168                    # Just to check it's there.
> cd /etc/modprobe.d
> sudo touch blacklist-network
> nano blacklist-network
Add "blacklist r8168" to the empty file.
> sudo update initramfs -u            # To make the change permanent.
Logout and reboot.
> ethtool -i eth0                           # To check that it's using the new (old) driver.

Already at the third step I run into trouble. It gives me this error message:

I'd have posted a code snippet, but as you can see I'm also having some trouble with X, although it appears every now and then, and isn't bound to this driver exchange experiment. I think. It may have been caused of forgetting to install fonts before I went ahead with Openbox, although except for that and skipping ALSA (because I'm getting an error as soon as I try

> alsamixer

but that's another story) I followed the Beginner's Guide from top to bottom. It may also be the cause of GNOME, which I installed because I found that there was (and IS) something very odd with how my "desktop enviroment" (consisting of Openbox, PyPanel, Nitrogen, Thunar, Conky etc) looked, a slight blur, to be frank. However, when I started X with GNOME, it looked just like it used to in Ubuntu, a sharp and clear display. So something ought to be missing for me, that GNOME has, but I'd rather not use GNOME since it uses almost twice as much RAM as my Openbox combo does according to Conky. If you know what would be the cause of this, I'd be very happy to hear that as well.

Any ideas?

(This is so much fun compared to Ubuntu by the way, go Arch!)

delor · 2008-09-11 16:31:23

I have installed and loaded r8168 module but still can't connect to router.
You can see my dmesg lsmod and lspci on http://alan.umcs.lublin.pl/~bpiech/logi/
My motherboard is Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R/DS3

EDIT:
I have set 'Wake-On-Lan After Shutdown' to Enable as pointed on wiki but that doesn't change anything.

Last edited by delor (2008-09-11 16:43:07)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-03-04 20:37:03

Changing driver for motherboard mounted NIC (Realtek 8169 to 8168)

#2 2008-03-05 18:25:56

Re: Changing driver for motherboard mounted NIC (Realtek 8169 to 8168)

#3 2008-03-06 18:35:15

Re: Changing driver for motherboard mounted NIC (Realtek 8169 to 8168)

#4 2008-03-06 18:39:37

Re: Changing driver for motherboard mounted NIC (Realtek 8169 to 8168)

#5 2008-03-07 21:40:34

Re: Changing driver for motherboard mounted NIC (Realtek 8169 to 8168)

#6 2008-09-11 16:31:23

Re: Changing driver for motherboard mounted NIC (Realtek 8169 to 8168)

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