[OpenIndiana-discuss] Network (RTL8111/8168) not working properly on OpenIndiana 151a

[Robin Axelsson]

After a fresh install of OI 151a I discovered that the network 
connection fails intermittently. Firefox stalls in OI, SSH sessions 
spontaneously get severed, internet/network availability goes on and off 
with this connection.

Basically the behaviour is the same as when I was running earlier builds 
of OpenSolaris on a machine with the RTL8111DL chip. When asking the 
question on the Osol forums the reply was that this was a known bug and 
the recommendation was to get an Intel based NIC. Later I was informed 
that this bug was resolved in later builds of OpenSolaris. So when I 
upgraded to build 134, the RTL8111DL started working without problems. I 
even upgraded to OpenIndiana 148 and still no problems.

Now I have replaced the motherboard on that system to a motherboard with 
the RTL8111E chip. Since my hard drive died I have done a fresh install 
of OI 151a on a new hard drive and once again this network bug has woken 
up from its apparently dormant state.

Has someone accidentally put an old version of the rge driver into the 
OI distribution? If not, does anyone have any idea as to why this 
problem has come back?

I tried to replace the rge driver with the gani 2.6.8 driver but the 
problem was slightly worse on the gani driver. Even my VMs hang when 
using the gani0 connection  (bridged networking on VBox).

I have tried using an Intel network card with the e1000g driver and it 
has shown no problems whatsoever on my system.

So is this problem fixable or will I have to use Intel NICs with my system?

Robin.