Re: still having r8169 woes with XID 18000000

[Phil Sutter <phil@nwl.cc>]

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 04:02:11PM +0300, Timo Teräs wrote:
> > Comparing r8169-6.013 with it's predecessor 6.012, you'll find a newly
> > enabled function rtl8169_phy_power_up() as well as some more invocations
> > of rtl8169_phy_power_down().
> > 
> > This is probably the solution to these (at least in our case) very
> > sporadic, but highly annoying, problems. In fact, when our NIC didn't
> > detect any link, it needed a full power-cycle (no success with
> > reset-button), so almost not workaroundable.
> 
> Sounds very similar to the problem I have. Thanks for the pointers!
> 
> It looks like the r8169 driver does have phy power up code in it, but
> it's only executed for specific versions of the chip. Realtek driver
> seems to do it unconditionally.

Hmm. I actually never looked at the corresponding parts of the
in-tree-driver, but that would have definitely been the next step in
order to fix it.

> The check seems to be:
>                 if ((tp->mac_version == RTL_GIGA_MAC_VER_11) ||
>                     (tp->mac_version == RTL_GIGA_MAC_VER_12) ||
>                     (tp->mac_version >= RTL_GIGA_MAC_VER_17)) {
> 
> I wonder if I should just add my mac version there (_VER_05) and test if
> it'll make it better.

Surely worth a try. On the other hand, looking at the sheer mass of
problem reports regarding this driver, making it worse is rather hard to
do I guess. :)

(Good night and) good luck, Phil