Realtek dual port pci-express network card fails -- SOLVED

Fred Krogh · Last edited by Fred Krogh on Thu Aug 25, 2011 1:04 pm; edited 1 time in total

I've tried the Linux driver and also the one from Realtek, which is the one currently in my system.
Right now I'm using a single port card, lspci |grep -i realtek gives

DONAHUE · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 8:40 pm Post subject:

what does lspci -k say about modules and driver in use for the dual port?
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:04 pm Post subject:

This does not show a whole lot more. Without the dual port

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:18 pm Post subject:

lspci -k should display the driver in use, like this:

Fred Krogh · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:29 pm Post subject:

This is weird. lsmod |grep r81 shows
r8168 175144 0
Anyway, I'd appreciate knowing how to get and install the firmware. Can you help with that? Thanks.

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:41 pm Post subject:

Well, in my case I had a fresh install with newly built kernel, after first boot reading dmesg is kind of mandatory. The NIC was working, I could log in over SSH, but there was a warning in dmesg about missing firmware with fixes. It appears there is no ebuild with this firmware, so I downloaded it from http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages
In your case I'd start in http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ to make sure you are using correct driver.
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:27 pm Post subject:

Things checked o.k. with http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/. I downloaded the firmware as you suggested and have unpacked it. I'm unclear on how to proceed at this point. Do I just copy all the stuff that unpacked into .lib/firmware over to /lib/firmware? Thanks,
Fred

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:30 pm Post subject:

Fred,

did you see dmesg, what does it say about your NIC, if anything?
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:35 pm Post subject:

Here are results from dmesg|grep -i -b1 -a2 realtek

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:42 pm Post subject:

Fred,

I had a line in dmesg instructing me to put rtl8168d-2.fw into /lib/firmware/rtl_nic/

I did so and the message went away. I think there is something else wrong with your setup. Can you boot from a known good liveCD like SystemRescueCd and see if the card works.
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:22 am Post subject:

The live cd (actually a usb stick) is able to access all the ethernet ports. It is using the r8169 driver just like I'm trying to do. I've tried copying over the firmware driver as was suggested as a possibility. That has had no effect. With the live cd, dmesg showed the jme ethernet driver getting loaded. I've tried putting that in my kernel, but that had no effect as I would expect. The live cd is dong something right that I'm not doing. I'd appreciate suggestions on how to track that down. My poking around did me no good. Thanks,
Fred

Jaglover · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 1:48 am Post subject:

Fred,

what is the PCI-ID of this card? You could also post output of lsmod while running liveCD.
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:04 am Post subject:

Here is lspci -kvnn from the live cd:

Fred Krogh · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:19 am Post subject:

Just to remove the question, I have tried this with the realtek driver included as a module. The only change is that when forming the difference between the previous uaual case and the new usual case, I get these three lines

Jaglover · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:22 am Post subject:

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

This udev file is responsible for naming devices. Maybe you tried some other card in that box and now your new card is eth2 or eth3.
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Fred Krogh · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 1:04 pm Post subject:

You nailed it! There were 5 rules there. I just exchanged the names eth4, eth1, and eth5,eth2, and all is working. Well almost, I'm still not getting my eth2 to connect properly to the wireless router, but that is a different problem.
Many thanks, I've learned a lot here.