Realtek 8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet disappears in 2.6.33 deblob?

[Dmitry Samoyloff]

At Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:59:49 -0400,
wayne at in-giro.org wrote:
> 
> ahoy all,
> 
>    sorry for the first message.  i found the log file for the 2.6.33  
> libre-kernel and saw the message about the Realtek 8169 Ethernet  
> Controller being removed in this version for "missing free firmware":
> 
> R8169 - Realtek 8169 gigabit ethernet support
> drivers/net/r8169.c: report missing Free firmware
> drivers/net/r8169.c: removed blobs
> 
> 
> is it possible that this device may work in the future if a free  
> firmware can be developed/reverse engineered?

Hello Wayne,

It seems to me like your Gentoo kernel is not deblobbed correctly, just like
gentoo-sources-2.6.34-r1 for me with deblob-2.6.34 script. Instead of removing
the Realtek's blob, it removes the whole source file. If you download the
deblobbed Linux from [1], you'd probably get your Realtek chip working. My
ethernet works OK with the deblobbed driver:

# lspci | grep -i realtek 
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)

[1] http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/selibre/linux-libre/download/releases/2.6.34-libre/

-- 
I'm an FSF member -- Help us support software freedom!
<http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=7253>