Realtek 8111C?

[Sebastian]

Oliver Fromme wrote:
> Sebastian <sebastian at mindling.com> wrote:
>  > I'd like to confirm my understanding of current status on this NIC. It 
>  > seems, based on some searching, the current Realtek driver in FreeBSD 
>  > doesn't support the 8111C, and that although the vendor-supplied driver 
>  > _may_ work for older 5.x and 6.0 releases (if one can get it compiled, I 
>  > couldn't), it doesn't work in 6.3 or 7. So the RTL8111C is effectively 
>  > not supported. True?
>  > 
>  > I picked up a nice little Atom board to use as a low-power NAS, and 
>  > unfortunately just assumed the onboard Realtek NIC was supported. 
>  > Unfortunately I don't have a PCI slot on this mobo to use a different NIC.
>
> What vendor ID and product ID, exactly?
> ("pciconf -lv" will tell.)
>   
Thanks for all the responses. I've made a little progress as a result.

The computer is an MSI Wind barebone unit with "MS-7418" on the mb.
Link: <http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=Wind_PC&class=npc>

The NIC is an RTL8111C, and here's the output of `pciconf -lv` on FreeBSD 6.3:

none2 at pci0:1:0:0:     class=0x020000 card=0x41801462 chip=0x816810ec rev=0x02 hdr=0x00
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

After reading the responses here, I tried the 7.1-beta live CD. It detects the
NIC, and the output of the above is changed slightly (new name):

re0 at pci0:1:0:0:     class=0x020000 card=0x41801462 chip=0x816810ec rev=0x02 hdr=0x00
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

I was able to bring up the interface using the live CD, and at first glance it
seems to be working (pings ok), but I didn't stress-test it.

So if all else fails, I will continue using 7.1. But first, since I'm trying to
use FreeNAS, which is FreeBSD 6.3, I thought I'd try copying the driver from 7.1.
The module (if_re.ko) appears to load successfully at boot time, however the NIC
is still not shown in dmesg and unavailable as re0. I admit I don't know if this
should even work (7.1-compiled module on 6.3 kernel). I may be missing something.

This machine will run off a CF card, hence the desire to use flash-friendly
FreeNAS. I do have some experience with NanoBSD, so if I can't get FreeNAS to
work I'll pursue that with 7.1.

Thanks for any further insights you might have!

Sebastian