RE: r8169 hangs machine on kernel boot (bisected)

[hayeswang <hayeswang@realtek.com>]

 Hello,

> From: Alexander Wuerstlein [mailto:arw@arw.name] 
> Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2011 1:30 AM
> To: Hayeswang
> Cc: 'David S. Miller'; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; 'franois romieu'
> Subject: Re: r8169 hangs machine on kernel boot (bisected)
> 
> Hello,
> 
> On 11-02-18 15:01, hayeswang <hayeswang@realtek.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > > I've just tried to boot a new computer featuring a Realtek r8168 
> > > onboard (lspci calls it Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
> > > RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] 
> > > (rev 04), see [1]) network chip with kernel
> > > 2.6.38-rc5 and current git. Both hang on boot just after 
> USB device 
> > > initialization and just before the kernel usually does DHCP. The 
> > > previous 2.6.37 didn't hang on boot, but showed strange behaviour 
> > > (only 10MBit half duplex on autonegotiation, tons of 
> errors on the 
> > > switch interface[2]) which is why I tried the newer 
> kernel in hopes that there would be fixes.
> > > 
> > > I bisected the hang-before-dhcp bug down to commit 'r8169: magic.'
> > > (b646d90053f887c1bc243191e693a9b02d09f2c2, also see [1]). 
> Since the 
> > > commit really does its description justice and looks like 
> some weird 
> > > hardware magic, I'd like to ask the wizards on how to 
> proceed with fixing it.
> > 
> > I have try the 8168DP and it wouldn't hang. I think I need 
> more information.
> > Could you give the information about the motherboard and 
> the version of BIOS.
> > Besides, please use the realtek driver, and dump the MAC 
> information 
> > by using "ethtool -d eth0". These are helpful to find out 
> what happens. Thanks.
> 
> I'm sorry that it took me so long to answer, I've had some 
> problems booting the machine today since the PXE-Client 
> didn't get any DHCP requests through. I'm not sure if its 
> related, the problem cleared up after I opened up the machine 
> to get the motherboard data and stuff.
> 
> Long story short, new files 'bios', 'hardware' and 'ethtool-d' in
> http://wwwcip.cs.fau.de/~snalwuer/kernel-r8169
> Bios revision is the latest available from Fujitsu for that hardware.
> Hardware numbers and serials are accurate, but the 
> inscriptions on the chips I suspected to be PHYs were very 
> hard to read, so expect errors.
> The 'ethtool-d' is especially curious, since it consists of 
> only 'FF'-bytes. The ethtool register dump was taken on a 
> 2.6.37 with r8168 as a module.

Thanks the information you provide. I would send the information to the related
people. However, the FF value of all registers is curious. I would try to
reproduce the issue first.

> 
> fujitsu.com also has some (limited, end-user-focused) 
> hardware documentation if you enter the serial number 
> 'YL7E003277' on http://ts.fujitsu.com/support/downloads.html
> 
> If you need any further information, don't hesitate to ask.
> 

 
Best Regards,
Hayes