2011-11-01

Maintenance of malabar-mode

As some of my readers may have noticed, not much has happened to malabar-mode in quite a while.  I have simply been too busy, and have started using IntelliJ as my IDE of choice.

So this is a call to interested parties:  If anybody wants to take over malabar-mode, let me know and we'll work out the details.

2011-08-22

Permanently fixing Realtek networking on Ubuntu Natty

So here we are again. Kernel upgrade, then reboot => no network. Last week a kernel upgrade borked my network again, and it took a while before I remembered that I needed the r8168 module (see last posting).

Today it happened again. So I think to myself "There must be a better way."  It turns out there is:  It is called DKMS, the "Dynamic Kernel Module Support".  Essentially it works by registering the module for rebuild whenever the kernel is upgraded.

2011-05-03

Fixing Realtek networking on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

Tonight I made the mistake of upgrading my primary home work computer to Ubuntu 11.04 in the middle of a crunch period at work.  I'd found the perfect time for it, I thought; start the upgrade and get the kids to bed while it runs (monitoring it every now and then).  Once the kids are tucked in, I reboot the box.  So what happens?  

Boom! no network.  dmesg says 
r8169 0000:02:00.0: eth0: unable to apply firmware patch
r8169 0000:02:00.0: eth0: link down
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
Ouchie; I, like, uhm, really need net access for work.

I'll elide the approximately four hours of increasingly panicky fiddling and Googling that occurred at this point; I feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.

End of story:  Check which Realtek chipset you have using lspci. Grab the appropriate proprietary driver, r8168 or r8169 (hope for the 8168, the 8169 driver doesn't even compile without the changes this guy details; luckily I have an 8168) and install it.  I have net again!

Now to do what I originally booted the box for.