r8169: link up, link down

r8169: link up, link down

[J. Christopher Pereira]

Hi:

An old FC11 server died recently so we changed the hardware.
The new hardware has a r8169 nic with the following driver version (dmesg
output):

        r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded
        r8169 0000:02:01.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
        r8169 0000:02:01.0: no PCI Express capability

Once in a while, the nic stops working with many "link up" and "link down"
messages:

        r8169: eth1: link up
        r8169: eth1: link down

The problem is solved by reseting the server.

I found some bug reports out there, but couldn't find any clear info about
the problem or if it has been fixed in newer driver versions.
The server is using the latest FC11 kernel
(kernel-2.6.30.10-105.2.23.fc11.x86_64) and FC11 reached its end of life.
Replacing the nic for another model is obviously the simplest solution, but.

Is there any solution or workarround?

Re: r8169: link up, link down

[Francois Romieu]

J. Christopher Pereira <kripper@imatronix.cl> :
[...]
> Is there any solution or workarround?

If it's an XID 98000000 - i.e. old new hardware - you may try to remove the
device then rescan the PCI bus through sysfs.

Building a modern kernel is strongly suggested if the hardware includes
a recent 816x chipset.

-- 
Ueimor

RE: r8169: link up, link down

[J. Christopher Pereira]

Hi Francois:

Thanks for answering.

> If it's an XID 98000000 - i.e. old new hardware - you may try to remove
the device then rescan the PCI bus through sysfs.

dmesg says "eth0: RTL8110s at 0xffffc2000067ec00, 00:4f:4a:10:1e:cf, XID
04000000 IRQ 16".

> Building a modern kernel is strongly suggested if the hardware includes a
recent 816x chipset.

Is there any particular patch I could apply and just recompile the driver?
My hope was to first receive feedback and identify some probably related
known bug, in order to avoid searching for a solution by trial and error or
by updating the whole environment.

Re: r8169: link up, link down

[Francois Romieu]

J. Christopher Pereira <kripper@imatronix.cl> :
[...]
> dmesg says "eth0: RTL8110s at 0xffffc2000067ec00, 00:4f:4a:10:1e:cf, XID
> 04000000 IRQ 16".

It's an old chipset (RTL_GIGA_MAC_VER_03). The PCI remove / rescan trick
may or may not work.

> > Building a modern kernel is strongly suggested if the hardware includes a
> recent 816x chipset.
> 
> Is there any particular patch I could apply and just recompile the driver?

Your kernel is more than three years old. It is not _that_ long but there
are ~182 r8169 patches between v2.6.30 and v3.4. There will still be a lot
even after the trivial ones are factored out.

See git log -p v2.6.30..v3.4 --follow -- drivers/net/ethernet/realtek/r8169.c
for the whole gore.

> My hope was to first receive feedback and identify some probably related
> known bug, in order to avoid searching for a solution by trial and error or
> by updating the whole environment.

You should really try 3.4 and revert 036dafa28da1e2565a8529de2ae663c37b7a0060.
It's the best I can suggest.

-- 
Ueimor