Bug 452761

For the sake on completeness I should note that this r8169 device is in a
NetGear GA511 PCCard.  Nothing ominous seen in the logs as the PCMCIA (Yenta)
driver load.

It is poossible that it is the Yenta driver that is screwed up between kernels,
but unlikely.  I have 2 PCCard NICs, the GA511 as eth0 and a 3Com Vortex as
eth1.  While the GA511 is broken in the 2.6.18-92+ kernels referred to above,
the functionality of the Vortex (eth1) is unimpaired.

Hello,
I'm solving another issues regarding r8169 driver. Now I have a backport of
upstream r8169 that should probably solve your problem. Could you please try a
test kernel and provide me a result? The kernel is available here
http://people.redhat.com/ivecera/rhel-5-r8169/

Ivan

It's working in the test kernel.  See below.

Will we have to wait until RHEL v5.3 for this, or will the fix be rolled out in
a v5.2 update?

----------------------

[root@nemesis ~]# uname -a
Linux nemesis 2.6.18-94.el5.ivtest.1 #1 SMP Wed Jun 25 16:33:22 CEST 2008 i686
i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[root@nemesis ~]# ping -I eth0 -c 3 192.168.0.7
PING 192.168.0.7 (192.168.0.7) from 192.168.0.1 eth0: 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.7: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.382 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.7: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.298 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.7: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.296 ms

--- 192.168.0.7 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.296/0.325/0.382/0.042 ms

[root@nemesis ~]# mii-tool eth0
  No MII transceiver present!.

[root@nemesis ~]# ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
        Supported ports: [ TP ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
        Speed: 1000Mb/s
        Duplex: Full
        Port: Twisted Pair
        PHYAD: 0
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: on
        Supports Wake-on: pumbg
        Wake-on: g
        Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)
        Link detected: yes

[root@nemesis ~]# ethtool -i eth0
driver: r8169
version: 2.2LK-NAPI
firmware-version:
bus-info: 0000:02:00.0

Created attachment 314712 [details]
Final patch sent to review

This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release.  Product Management has requested
further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential
inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed
products.  This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update
release.

For the benefit of the RHEL Product and Program Management team: please do include this in a bug fix for 5.2, and roll into 5.3. We're waiting on this making it into a proper release to move forward with a platform. It solves a problem that we can't solve otherwise (we're using a micro-sized server that has no ability to have a different Ethernet plugged in).

in kernel-2.6.18-115.el5
You can download this test kernel from http://people.redhat.com/dzickus/el5

With this kernel, I am seeing a Mac address that is wrong. Output of ifconfig is below for eth0. Note the Mac address, and the inet6 address.

# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF  
          inet addr:192.168.8.3  Bcast:192.168.8.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::fcff:ffff:feff:ffff/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:90 errors:0 dropped:2726790010 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:122 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:10875 (10.6 KiB)  TX bytes:17206 (16.8 KiB)
          Interrupt:17 Base address:0x4000 

The /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 says:

# Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet con
troller
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=none
HWADDR=00:01:80:76:7A:9C
ONBOOT=yes
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=192.168.8.3
GATEWAY=192.168.8.1
TYPE=Ethernet
USERCTL=no
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes

Also note that a "service network restart" complains about this:

# service network restart
Shutting down interface eth0:  Device eth0 has MAC address FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF, instead of configured address 00:01:80:76:7A:9C. Ignoring.
                                                           [FAILED]
Shutting down loopback interface:                          [  OK  ]
Bringing up loopback interface:                            [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth0:                                [  OK  ]

An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009-0225.html