{Spam?} r8169 PXE boot problems

[Chong Yu Meng]

On Fri, 2008-04-04 at 22:21 -0500, David A. Bandel wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> I have 18 PXE clients.  16 of them (with various ethernet cards) boot
> from a central server just fine.  Two have the Realtek 8169 cards (not
> my choice, built into the motherboard) that won't boot.  They start to
> boot, then after the kernel takes over they go eth0 down and stop.
> 
> Google suggests I'm not the only one with this problem, but I didn't
> find a clear solution.

What distro and kernel version are you using? I have a (really crappy)
Gigabyte board that has a Realtek 8169 built-in. If I use CentOS, or any
RHEL clone (4.x or 5.x doesn't matter, same problem), the network card
doesn't get recognized. 

I have to say though that I am not using PXE to install. I install via
DVD first, but even then, the network card doesn't get recognized. Using
the r1000 rpm works only temporarily before your whole system locks up. 

For me, the only way was to use the drivers from Realtek's website and
build the module manually. 


pascal chong