if_sk : the weirdest thing!

[craig]

my machine has a hdd swap-rack which allows me to boot different os's 
off different physical drives. (ie. pull-out xp, and plug in fbsd).
i recently purchased another hdd+tray to install gentoo on, just to see 
what the fuss is about.

i booted off the 2004.3 minimal install cd but it did not, 
unfortuanately, automatically find my realtek gigabit nic.
i suspected it might not, because i had a hell of time getting it to 
work on fbsd aswell - requiring a patched if_sk driver to get it going.

after a bit of digging, i found that i could

# modprobe sk98lin

to get the kernel happy with the nic. once up, it worked like a charm.
it got late and i needed to finish up some work on fbsd, so i pulled the 
gentoo drive out, plugged fbsd back in and booted up.

when it came up, i found that i was without a network!
# dmesg | grep sk
    said something about (IIRC)
(blah)
skc0: no PHY found

# ifconfig
    confirmed that there was no net

when i tried to manually
# kldload if_sk
freebsd panic'ed and died right there!

i rebooted a few times (a trick i learnt from ms) but still it would not 
come back. even powering the machine completely down did not help!!!
so i plugged in the winxp drive and booted. it came up fine, network in 
good working order.
i booted fbsd again and the network came up this time without a complaint!

AND I CAN REPLICATE THIS MADNESS!

boot fbsd
  - check network = all okay
boot gentoo livecd
  - load sk98lin
  - check network = all okay
boot fbsd
  - check network = notwork!

(remedy)
boot wxp
  - check network = all okay
boot fbsd
  - check network = all okay


wtf???

i understand that my GF would be upset if i played around with other 
girls, but does my OS have to be *so damn jealous*????

any ideas whats on here?

-- 
craig at small-pla.net