Realtek 811B LAN card on FreeBSD 7.0

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Greg Mars
> Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 6:51 PM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org; freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
> Subject: Realtek 811B LAN card on FreeBSD 7.0
>
>
> A few months ago, I posted asking about how good support the Realtek 8111B
> PCI Express LAN chipset is.
> The conclusion was that its behavior was rather flaky on FreeBSD 7.0
>
> Anyway, I got the motherboard with the chip integrated because the MOBO
> otherwise did what I needed.
> After installation of FreeBSD/i386 the chip was detected and the re driver
> attached but DHCP configuration wouldn't work. After searching on the
> internet, I found some patches at
>
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-amd64/2007-December/010545.html
>
> http://people.freebsd.org/~yongari/re/if_re.c
> <http://people.freebsd.org/%7Eyongari/re/if_re.c>
> http://people.freebsd.org/~yongari/re/if_rlreg.h
> <http://people.freebsd.org/%7Eyongari/re/if_rlreg.h>
>
>
> and applied them.
>
> After rebuilding the kernel, everything worked.
> Shortly after I decided I was going to run the FreeBSD/amd64 version
> instead.
> I had not kept the patches that worked on i386, so I downloaded from the
> same URL again.
> However, this time, applying the patch resulted in no change: DHCP
> configuration still wouldn't work.
>
> Now, I'm not sure what variable is responsible for this, the
> change to amd64
> or whether there was another version of the patch. Interestingly, in the
> thread where I found those links, people were running amd64 and had their
> problems resolved. I noticed that the version of if_re.c file was 107 the
> second time whereas the post said it was 101.
> I'm guessing the file was updated at the URL and this resulted in a
> regression.
> The problem is, I'm not in a position to say exactly which version worked.
>
> Is there anyone on the list close to this work and would have an idea of
> what happened?
> I am currently using a PCI lan card that works with the rl driver but it
> would be nice to have the integrated chip work too.

This sad story is an excellent example of why patches like this
need to be run through the standard development using the PR system,
not someone's personal website.  If they had been you could use
cvs to see what was changed.

E-mail the person who created the patches.  If your lucky he
can help you.  And for God's sake, once you get a running system,
submit a PR with the patches if the person who created
them isn't willing to do so.

Ted