From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Johannes Petersson" Subject: r8169 and 2.4.26 finally working Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 17:46:57 +0200 Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Message-ID: <000001c439ca$b0c39040$4500a8c0@freelancer> Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Return-path: To: , Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Hello This is the story so far, how it finally worked out and a bit of a recap for the netdev@oss.sgi.com list. I run Slackware 9.1 on a server with a MSI motherboard that has a RealTek 8169 gigabit lan. When copying large files from the server it hangs / crashes and it is really slow when writing large files to the server. From reading on the net I found out that the original r8169 driver (ver. 1.2) is not working properly. I first compiled and installed the 2.4.26 kernel and hoped that it would solve my problems which it didn't. Then I was in contact with both Francois Romieu and Adam Nielsen since these guys had been writing a lot of very informative stuff on the subject at seclists.org and netdev@oss.sgi.com. I downloaded and tried their three different patches: http://www.fr.zoreil.com/people/francois/misc/20040420-2.4.26-r8169.c-st able.patch http://www.fr.zoreil.com/people/francois/misc/20040504-2.4.27-pre1-r8169 .c-test.patch http://seclists.org/lists/linux-kernel/2004/Apr/0627.html The patches were tried one at a time to the vanilla sources for the 2.4.26 kernel. The 2.4.26-r8169.c-stable.patch gave the usual error about not beeing able to patch the file completely when I applied it to the kernel source. The patch from Adam didn't work for me either, it too, gave the usual message about not beeing able to patch the file. The only patched that actually applied without any problems to the kernel was the 20040504-2.4.27-pre1-r8169.c-test.patch from Francois. At that time I had some hope. But while compiling the kernel with the 2.4.27-pre1-r8169 patch I got the following compile errors when I issued "make bzImage": Implicit declaration of netdev_priv (I continued anyway with make modules, and make modules_install). Make modules_install gave me this error: Depmod: unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.26/.../r8169.o After rebooting this kernel, the rtl8169 driver of course didn't work. Then I thought that I would have to resort to compiling and installing the 2.6.6 kernel which is supposed to solve the problem according to Francois and Adam. But before I did this I gave the official driver (ver. 1.6) from RealTeks homepage a try: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloads1-3.aspx?software=True&comp amodel=RTL8169S-32%2F64 I compiled and installed the driver and did modprobe and started doing some testing. As it turns out the system actually worked with this driver. I rebooted and since then the server has been up and running without problems. Maybe RealTeks 1.6 driver isn't the best, but it works for me with kernel 2.4.26 and performs pretty well while copying files in the gigabit lan. I hope this little novel of mine can help somebody else with the same problem and big thanks to Francois and Adam for helping me out. Sincerely Johannes Petersson