Comments on: OpenSolaris – RTL8111/8168B issues

By: Adam Smith

Adam Smith — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:53:49 +0000

ACTUALLY — sorry — I take back my comment about the -9 driver not working 100% of the time. Turns out a system reboot resets the driver.

There are discussions on the aforementioned forum thread about permanently installing the driver.

Turns out you can skip the modunload / ifconfig stuff if you want to just ‘install’ it rather than just patch it in until the next reboot. So you can install by:

1) copy rge into /platform/i86pc/kernel/drv (add a /amd64 on the end if you’re on a 64 bit platform)

2) restart!

3) verify that you are running the patched driver: modinfo | grep rge, look for a line that ends with -9).

By: Adam Smith

Adam Smith — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:38:13 +0000

ok the -9 driver made the problems much better but the network still goes down from time to time.

By: sh0x

sh0x — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:15:39 +0000

I ran into this issue with rge hanging and a fter installing the -9 driver it took care of the problems. Just extract and run make; make install.

By: Adam Smith

Adam Smith — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:16:53 +0000

Yes, seems like the new driver works. The “-9″ variant seems to work for me and is reported to work for others, though I don’t think it will be the final production release.

Nevertheless, to install it, do:

1) download it from here: http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/rge-6888015-9.tar.gz
2) follow these instructions: :)

(1) unload existing rge:
unplumb rge port
# ifconfig rge0 unplumb

find module id of rge
# modinfo | grep rge
if the result is:
200 fffffffff889e000 d420 320 1 rge (Realtek 1Gb Ethernet)
then,
# modunload -i 200

(2) load the new rge
if you use 64bit kernel:
# modload ./amd64/rge

if you use 32bit kernel:
# modload ./i386/rge

ensure the new rge is loaded and running
# modinfo | grep rge
200 fffffffff889e000 d420 320 1 rge (Realtek 1Gb Ethernet mcast.3)

(3) plumb the new rge
# ifconfig rge0 plumb …….

(4) then test your applications.

—
here was the before/after on my modinfo line:

before: 155 fffffffff7eb5000 a9d8 66 1 m (Realtek 1Gb Ethernet)
after: 155 fffffffff7f36000 d868 66 1 rge (Realtek 1Gb Ethernet 6888015-9)

By: Wam

Wam — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:04:14 +0000

Seems that there is now a fix in the pipe :
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=434383

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:27:07 +0000

FWIW, I was having the same issue with the RGE driver (board is ASUS M3A78-EH with the RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller) running Opensolaris 2009.06. Im using it as a NAS via NFS with VMWare ESXi as the NFS client. Under heavy load, every hour or two, the network would dissapear for 5 to ten minutes before reappearing.

I tried all the fixes listed above, and many more with no success. I switched to the gani driver (2.6.4) and Ive just run flat out NFS load on it for 24 hours with no interruption.

Awesome! Hope this helps someone!

Nick

By: Ducky

Ducky — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:18:56 +0000

I’ve got this issue too :(
What I’ve found very interesting, is that my Mac can rape the card for all its worth, for as long as I want, at high speeds, no problems.
I’ll play music off the network share, decompress RAR files off the network share, transfer hundreds of gigabytes, no problem.

But when I try to do that with my Windows Machine, it’ll crap out after transferring 10gb or so.

Maybe that can help you?

Keep us posted :)

Ducky

By: Daz

Daz — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:44:28 +0000

@John Oh? - i haven't had any issues with the e1000g driver so far. Hopefully you find a simple fix soon.

By: John

John — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:56:34 +0000

Not 5 minutes after I posted, the network stack on my file server died. I’m not sure what the issue is now.

By: John

John — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:32:32 +0000

Daz, like you, I bought an Intel EXPI9300PTBLK card to replace the on-board Realtek NIC. It (and the e1000g driver) are rock solid, so far. I’ve used it for nearly a week now with no problems.