Arch Linux

Waves77

Member

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 5

No luck with r8168

I have a realtek r8168 ethernet card, and it seems more people are having trouble with it, but none of the solutions mentioned have worked so far.

I downloaded the latest driver from realtek, compiled and install without a problem, blacklisted r8169 and modprobe r8168 gives no errors.

lspci detects the card w/o a problem, and lsmod show r8168 as well. Rebooting doesn't change anything.

# ifconfig eth0 up
# dhcpcd eth0

and it just times out

Tried a different cable, and knoppix on my wife's laptop connects ok.

Any ideas?

Waves77

Member

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 5

Re: No luck with r8168

PS:

Windows was never installed on this machine (new), but was ran under VMWARE. I've unplugged the powercable as indicated in some other forums, but no change either.

ToLo

Member

From: Flensburg/Germany

Registered: 2006-02-12

Posts: 36

Re: No luck with r8168

high waves

for me it looks like, that the kernel is still loading this:
/lib/modules/2.6.??-????/kernel/drivers/net/r8169.ko
                         
you get some information for eth0 by

ethtool -i eth0

I get this message:
# ethtool -i eth0
driver: r8168
version: 8.002.00-NAPI
firmware-version:
bus-info: 0000:01:00.0

Delete r8169.ko, execute depmod -a again, and rebuild the initial ramdisk.

/sbin/mkinitcpio -k 2.6.21-ARCH -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/kernel26.img
-> or in a similar way fitting to your kernel!

Now restart and try to verify with ethtool again

Btw.: the realtek module is only building for me on on kernel-2.6.21. With kernel 2.6.22 I get an errormessage during buildtime. It looks like that sources are not prepared for kernel-2.6.22. Maybe r8168 and r8169 are getting merged with 2.6.23. I read something about it but I'm not sure.

hope it's helping
ToLo

Waves77

Member

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 5

Re: No luck with r8168

Thanks for the info! I'll try it when I get home this evening and I'll post the results.

BTW, they released a new driver a couple of days ago (27th), I will give it a shot with 2.6.22 and see how it goes...

Waves77

Member

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 5

Re: No luck with r8168

Bummer, no luck with 2.6.22 - no problem with building the module, lsmod lists it (r8169 not there)... no connection. Even worse, it hangs after reboot

ToLo

Member

From: Flensburg/Germany

Registered: 2006-02-12

Posts: 36

Re: No luck with r8168

If your computer hangs after reboot, I expect that the rebuild of the initial ramdisk failed. I made some similar experience here on my own system. Did you exactly rebuild the way I described before?

I updated today my kernel to 2.6.22. The new driver is building fine now, as described. Following the update I executed the three steps:
1. removing or backing r8169.ko
2. depmod -a
3. /sbin/mkinitcpio -k 2.6.22-ARCH -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/kernel26.img

here is the order I worked:
1. update kernel and reboot!!
2. build r8168 modul and install
3. the three steps described before and final reboot

Which kernel do you use?

bye ToLo

Last edited by ToLo (2007-08-31 16:20:12)

Waves77

Member

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 5

Re: No luck with r8168

It was my mistake Turns out my cable provider is filtering by MAC address... we unlockef the modem on my wife's windows laptop, and I figured that would be the end of it. After changing my MAC address to matchj hers, I have no problems at all...