Re: DHCP stopped working on RTL8168/8111

On 30 Nov 2022, at 23:43, Morgan Wesström wrote:
> On 2022-11-30 23:14, Peter Gibbs wrote:
> It seems you're hitting this old bug which is still open after 10 years:
> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=166724
>
> The bug states there's a Realtek driver in Ports that doesn't experience this issue but I have never tested it.

Installing this driver was a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, since
ports and packages require a working internet connection. However, I’ve
managed. List of steps I took, in case anyone has a similar issue in the
future:

1. Downloaded realtek-re-kmod-197.00.pkg[1], using a web browser on a
   different computer.
2. Extracted files from realtek-re-kmod-197.00.pkg using:
        tar -C realtek -xf realtek-re-kmod-197.00.pkg
3. Copied the realtek directory to a USB drive.
4. Mounted the USB drive on the FreeBSD machine.
5. Copied realtek/boot/modules/if_re.ko to /boot/modules/if_re_own.ko.
6. Added the following 2 lines to /boot/loader.conf:
        if_re_load="YES"
        if_re_name="/boot/modules/if_re_own.ko"
7. Rebooted the machine.

At that point the NIC started working (along with DHCP). To tidy this
temporary hack up:

8. Installed the proper driver package with:
        pkg install realtek-re-kmod
9. Updated the if_re_name line in /boot/loader.conf to:
        if_re_name="/boot/modules/if_re.ko"
10. Rebooted the machine.
11. Checked that everything works.
12. Deleted /boot/modules/if_re_own.ko.

Thank you Morgan for the help!
Peter

[1]: <http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:13:amd64/quarterly/All/realtek-re-kmod-197.00.pkg>