On 10/13/2013 11:42 AM, Ben Hutchings wrote: > - There is no firmware patch for your LAN-on-motherboard chip > (RTL8168B). > > - There is a firmware patch for the chip on the PCIe card (RTL8168D), > but this was never included in the driver in Debian kernels (except in > some experimental versions). > > The firmware files are patches to the PHY firmware on newer chips that > generally improve link stability. The driver can and does work without > them (since 2.6.32-3) but the chip will be less likely to maintain a > stable gigabit link if the requested patch is not available. Which is > why I asked...
I think the bug can now be closed. A different cable has fixed it. At first I thought it was a combination of a different cable and purging the firmware, plus rebuilding the initramfs, but now I have re-added the firmware and it still works. I didn't think the cable was the issue because I had *tried* swapping the cable out back when the issue first appeared in 2010. I was very methodical about the troubleshooting and saw zero difference with four different cables. I hate wasting people's time, so I'm very careful with troubleshooting. I am so very sorry! There is one related but different issue that I noticed. Because I don't use wake-on-lan, it doesn't affect me right now. When the OS shuts down and powers the machine off, link is gone. Power must be completely removed from the power supply to re-establish link while the computer is off and allow wake-on-lan to work. Is this a bug, or expected behavior? Is there something that someone could add to /etc/network/interfaces to re-enable link after deconfiguring the interface? Thanks, Shawn -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
