Hello
This is the story so far, how it finally worked out and a bit of a recap
for the netdev@xxxxxxxxxxx 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@xxxxxxxxxxxx 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
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