Realtek RTL8111/8168B GigE Ethernet Card
Zentyal 2.2.2 on Ubuntu 10.04lts
My SymptomsI have been running Zentyal 2.2.1 on Ubuntu 10.04lts for some time with no network problems
My machine is an HPdx2300 with onboard 100MB Intel Lan chip
and an separate PCIExpress Realtek RTL8111/8168B GigE Card
I upgraded by way of a clean install to Zentyal 2.2.2 on the same hardware
The Realtek card would just stop working after anything form 2 to 40 minutes
No other obvious symptoms, entries in logs - just no comms
After some researching it seems that there are some issues with these cards Ubuntu
Ubuntu 10.04 makes RTL8111/8168B network card unusable until cold reboot
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/573259Slow performance ~200Kb/s and othersFurther Research suggested a simpler explanation
By default Ubuntu loads the r8169 driver instead of the r8168
AND
Realtek have released a very recent (May2012) updated r8168 driver for linux
r8168-8.031.00.tar.bz2
LINUX driver for kernel 3.x and 2.6.x and 2.4.x 6.017.00 2012/5/24ESSENTIALLY
Ubuntu by default loads the 8169 driver
Realtek have the latest 8168 driver
You need to replace the 8169 with the 8168
Check if this situation pertains in your environment
sudo lshw -C network description: Ethernet interface
product:
RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 [pci@0000:02:00.0]
logical name: eth0
version: 03
serial: 00:0a:cd:1a:fc:1a
size: 1GB/s
capacity: 1GB/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes
driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full ip=192.168.42.1 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=1GB/s
resources: irq:26 ioport:be00(size=256) memory:fd8ff000-fd8fffff memory:fdefc000-fdefffff(prefetchable) memory:fde00000-fde1ffff(prefetchable)
OK you have the r8168 card
and
Hmmm Ubuntu has loaded the r8169 driver!This HowTo covers replacing the Ubuntu included r8169 driver
with the Realtek r8168 driver above.
I found that the Readme included with the driver covered most things
A couple of extra steps were taken from this HowTo
http://unixblogger.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/the-pain-of-an-realtek-rtl8111rtl8168-ethernet-card/I followed the readme then added bits from the HowTo as required
This was performed on Zentyal 2.2.2 on Ubuntu 10.04LTS
1. Get root privileges
Open the Administrator Console on Zentyal Desktop
2. Get the requirements (This is required to build the module - not mentioned in Readme)
To build and install the driver, we need the kernel headers and the build tools like gcc. To get them, just easily type in a terminal:
apt-get install build-essential3. Get the driver
Now, go to the official download page from Realtek for the Linux/UNIX Driver for the RTL8111/RTL8168 ethernet card and download the latest driver version. 8.031.00 (as of june 2012)
Link: Realtek Download Page (
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=13&PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#2)
4. Untar the archive
The driver is compressed to an archive. So uncompress it with the following command:
tar xfvj r8168-8.031.00.tar.bz2NOTE: Please do not forget to replace the “r8168-8.031.00.tar.bz2? with the driver version which you have downloaded!
It untars into a subdirectory
r8168-8.031.00 which contains a script
autorun.sh which does all the hard work for you
4a. Run the provided install script
cd r8168-8.031.00./autorun.shShould get to "Completed"
You can check what it did in the Log.txt in the r8168-x.yyy.zz folder
That’s it! After a reboot you should have the best possible performance with the RTL8111/RTL8168 and hopefully no other network problems
After the reboot you can check if the right driver is loaded by again running:
sudo lshw -C networkHappiness!