[SOLVED] r8169 doesn't work on Asus A6T Nb. with 2.6.24-rc3

Message

all-inc. · Post by **all-inc.** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 4:33 pm

Hi,
As I read on http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-kern ... 33169.html I'm not the only one with this Problem.
With 2.6.23 it worked for me. I'm on a amd64 machine.
Some cuts:
***dmesg(from syslog)***

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Mar  1 17:13:55 [kernel] r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.2LK loaded
Mar  1 17:13:55 [kernel] eth0: RTL8168b/8111b at 0xffffc20000012000, 00:17:31:e6:39:23, XID 38000000 IRQ 317
Mar  1 17:14:59 [kernel] r8169: eth0: link up
Mar  1 17:16:06 [kernel] NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Mar  1 17:16:06 [kernel] r8169: eth0: link up
Mar  1 17:18:24 [kernel] NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Mar  1 17:18:24 [kernel] r8169: eth0: link up

the watchdog errors came when I ping'd my router with several packets.

***ifcofig eth0***

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eth0      Protokoll:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse 00:17:31:E6:39:23  
          inet Adresse:192.168.2.4  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Maske:255.255.255.0
          inet6 Adresse: fe80::217:31ff:fee6:3923/64 Gültigkeitsbereich:Verbindung
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:89 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:92 overruns:0 carrier:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:1000 
          RX bytes:5745 (5.6 Kb)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:61 Basisadresse:0x2000

interesting, all transfer packets get dropped...

I really prefer to use 2.6.24 because wlan support via b43 got improved in this kernel-version...
I hope someone will help me. If you need further information, just ask!

all-inc.

Monkeh · Post by **Monkeh** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 7:32 pm

It's probably an MSI problem. Boot with pci=nomsi and see what happens.

all-inc. · Post by **all-inc.** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 10:10 am

WOW...it works! Thanks.
Please, you have to explain me what this bootparam exactly does and why it helped

google didn't tell me (well, I didn't spend much time with the search results).

Monkeh · Post by **Monkeh** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 1:35 pm

It disables Message Signalled Interrupts. Usually they're a good thing, but sometimes they do silly things (like break 8169s.. not that working 8169s are particularly good).

It's probably a chipset bug somewhere, I need to look into it on my laptop a bit further when I get it back.

Balage · Post by **Balage** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 9:29 am

Monkeh wrote:It's probably an MSI problem. Boot with pci=nomsi and see what happens.

You solved my almost half year old problem! Thank you very much!

Monkeh · Post by **Monkeh** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 3:45 pm

Balage wrote:
Monkeh wrote:It's probably an MSI problem. Boot with pci=nomsi and see what happens.
You solved my almost half year old problem! Thank you very much!

It took me over a year and much manual debugging of the driver to sort it myself.

alienvenom · Post by **alienvenom** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:19 am

Confirmed on a ASUS A8JS laptop with kernel 2.6.25. It was freezing at random times when I was doing a remote emerge, couldn't figure out why all dmesg said was that eth0 timed out. Seems to be working now!