Realtek 8111E kicking my b*tt

I can provide more information if needed. At this point I'm hoping for a reality check. I'm having a problem with my new Asus E350 board. The onboard nic uses a realtek 8111E. Basic functions work fine but it's dying when pushed. Big reads work, big writes to the server cause the driver to die. Lots of "link up" "repeated xx times" messages. I've given the nic its own IRQ, which helped, but the problem still takes down the system (locked console) if the client system keeps pushing big files. The problem happens with both 4.7 and 5.0b6a. Googling turns up familiar reports but nothing useful so far. Old news? Obvious fix I just haven't found?

 

I'd love to save the slot vs buying an Intel Pro.

 

seeing all the issue all distro's and even mac have with that nic ... do i think of short of compiling the newest driver yourself.....  you will have to wait for next beta and hope Tom included the newest driver in that beta .. and hoping that the new driver works better...

 

My MoBo has a Realtek 8111C and I started having the same issues (see my topic here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12549.0 ) but it only started when I upgraded to the 4.7 release.

At least I'm in good company.

 

Slackware 13.1 at the ready. Don't know how far I'll get building, let alone shoehorning the new driver. It's been many years...

I had recently had pretty much the same issue with my MB.  I have a C2SEE and a 8111C.  Here is my support thread if you're interested.  All the research I've done indicates that this is a driver issue.  I think that I started having problems with this after installing 4.7 but I am not absolutely certain. However since I now have all advanced format drives in my server I don't want to go back to the previous version.  I didn't have the time to try building my own kernel or doing a slackware build so I bought an Intel Pro PCI NIC and it has been working just fine I installed it.

 

Why is it so important to save one of the two PCI slots on your MB? From an unRAID perspective PCI slos are certainly not as important as PCIe slots.  So sacrificing a PCI slot for the Intel Pro PCI NIC would be worth it to me.

It looks like I've also just lost my Parity drive so I've got multiple issues going with mine as well. The HD gave out with no warning and a perfect parity check and SMART report, then woke from sleep to a dead drive. Need to figure out if it's the drive or maybe even the MoBo. If the MoBo, will look at new boards with the Intel NIC (if available).  If the drive is truly bad, then I guess replace that and get the Intel card.

So what's the consensus with this issue?  I'm building my first unRAID system and the mobo has a 8111C.  I was planning on using 4.7 as I have AF drives to use.  Am I stuck buying a Intel NIC?

So what's the consensus with this issue?  I'm building my first unRAID system and the mobo has a 8111C.  I was planning on using 4.7 as I have AF drives to use.  Am I stuck buying a Intel NIC?

 

Try your board out first and see how it goes.

 

I run a Gigabyte EP43-UD3L with the Realtek 8111C NIC and I have not had a problem with mine.

So what's the consensus with this issue?  I'm building my first unRAID system and the mobo has a 8111C.  I was planning on using 4.7 as I have AF drives to use.  Am I stuck buying a Intel NIC?

 

Try your board out first and see how it goes.

 

I run a Gigabyte EP43-UD3L with the Realtek 8111C NIC and I have not had a problem with mine.

This agrees with what I've found in my research of the issue - the problem is not consistent for all 8111C/D/E chips.  Some people just seem to be the unlucky ones that get a NIC that is a problem.  Perhaps my onboard NIC is bad but I think that it is a driver/hardware interaction because my NIC worked just fine before I switched to 4.7.  To be clear here I think the the issue is not really an unRAID problem but rather the hardware drivers that are included in the kernel that unRAID is built upon.  So it's not like 4.7 is broken and 4.5.6 is good but rather they have different drivers included so YMMV depending on the characteristics of your specific chip.  Of course I could try to RMA the board but then I'd have to pay for shipping and my server would be down.  So I opted to just get the Intel NIC - which some people do even if they don't have any problems because they are just so rock solid.

Why is it so important to save one of the two PCI slots on your MB? From an unRAID perspective PCI slos are certainly not as important as PCIe slots.  So sacrificing a PCI slot for the Intel Pro PCI NIC would be worth it to me.

 

If this were a for a customer or primary system I'd just cut losses and install another card. But it's something of a bed I made for myself with the goals of low power & cost, and hasty ordering. If  gets my head back in code even a little then fine. If I can't make the time then I already ordered an Intel card.

 

Can't believe I let another realtek bite me. I think the last time was w/FreeBSD 3. The answer was the same... Intel Pro.

So what's the consensus with this issue?  I'm building my first unRAID system and the mobo has a 8111C.  I was planning on using 4.7 as I have AF drives to use.  Am I stuck buying a Intel NIC?

 

Try your board out first and see how it goes.

 

I run a Gigabyte EP43-UD3L with the Realtek 8111C NIC and I have not had a problem with mine.

 

Ok, so try out my build and hope for the best.  I'll keep this issue in mind if I have troubles.  Thanks.

Can't believe I let another realtek bite me.

 

I think that it's about 15 years since I had a 'Realtek' experience.  I've avoided them like the plague ever since - nothing I've read or heard has encouraged my to change my mind!

 

What with realtek and atheros, my choice of mobo is somewhat restricted, but life is easier this way!

If I get the INTEL NIC card, do I just pop it in, disable on board NIC in BIOS and boot into unRaid? Any settings to change?

If I get the INTEL NIC card, do I just pop it in, disable on board NIC in BIOS and boot into unRaid? Any settings to change?

 

Should not have to change anything.

If I get the INTEL NIC card, do I just pop it in, disable on board NIC in BIOS and boot into unRaid?

Yes.

Any settings to change?

No.

Thanks guys! Forgot to add, plug cable into new NIC card as well in there  lol

Same issue here with same board as Cyrnel - this is nerving! Tried all possible tricks with Bios, network card still make the whole machine freeze when used after a while - not even intensively!

Does this kill your connection on just the server, or for your router?

 

My router has been dying while transferring large files to the server from my Mac.  Both devices are wired into my Airport Extreme, which is extending the AT&T RG via Ethernet.  AT&T holds its connection to the internet fine, but I have to reset my Airport Extreme.  Anyone know any basic settings that'll prevent this from happening? Is it the router causing the problem, or my Mac or server that's killing the router?

Check that you have the latest firmware for the Airport Extreme.

Yup, I do.  I don't know what the best approach is to using the APE.  Extend a network, create a new one? The AT&T RG is just 100mbit, so I have the APE where all my devices for data transfer are.  I'll see if this occurs again while transferring a lot of stuff.  Going to my friends' this week to stock up on a lot of HD media, so that'll be a true test for the machine (unfortunately my router won't be there to test)

I'm beginning to think there's something deeper than just a nic/driver problem. Still using 5.0b6a, preclearing several disks gave strange results. When the other three 2TB drives had finished, the F4 on sdb was trailing badly, still about 90% through the 2nd step. Throughput was in the low 20MB/s while the other drives had been 4x that or better. I moved the Samsung to sde where it progressed at closer to 100MB/s (though I'd have said an erratic 80-100MB/s). Of course I had to try another array using those disk assignments. Nope, it still crashed when the nic was pushed.

 

So, right now I'm installing Slackware 13.1 to see if a vanilla Samba volume on recent drivers can handle the stress.

Cyrnel do you mean that it crashed when the NIC was pushed with your new NIC?

No, still testing with the Realtek. Intel card won't be here until Tues.

 

Edit: The part that was interesting was how a drive that otherwise seems fine (precleared previously and SMART says okay) is performing so poorly on one SATA channel but 4x faster on another. That's without any nic involvement. Very preliminary results of course. I haven't tried to reproduce the poor results. Probably shouldn't be posting yet but it's weird/interesting.

 

With a freshly updated Slackware 13.1 install I just got ~20MB/s from a Win7 machine. No stability issues after several copies. Not great, but better.

 

So far, I'm not a fan of the ASUS EFI. If my linux skills are a two-left-thumbed hippo, this EFI feels like a straight-jacket.

Just wanted to add, I am also having an issue with this motherboard which uses... a Realtek 8111E chipset. I also have a support post going. Few users showing same thing. Soon as this nic is pushed, typically mine was when trying to write to the array, system complete froze and had to hard reboot. Got the weird "eth link up" messages via tail and also the ones that the previous message was repeated x times...

 

I have since put in a dual port HP PCI-E nic, and everything is great. No more freezes, no more of those weird "link up" messages, etc. I just had to plug my cable in to each port and ping the server to find out which port unRaid was using.

 

Shawn

 

Is it possible for the NIC to kill a router? lol.  Because I also have a BIOSTAR MOBO, with a Realtek RTL8111C NIC.

 

I didn't notice my server necessarily dying, but my APE would die, and then I think I tried to send files again, and the speeds were like 1 -2 MB/s.  I may not have restarted the server after this.