Getting Realtek PCIE Gigabit and Fast Ethernet NIC Driver

[Robert L. Cochran]

> Hi,
>
> I just built a new computer based on the Asrock 939SLI32-eSATA2 
> motherboard which has a Realtek PCIE Gigabit and Fast Ethernet integrated 
> network adapter. I then upgraded my Fedora Core 4 drive to Fedora Core 5 
> using the original Fedora Core 5 DVD. The system booted and decided my 
> ethernet controller needs the tulip driver. Running lspci -vb lists the 
> controller as "Unknown device 8168 (rev 01). It is very interesting to see 
> it is listing a serial number as one of the capabilities.
>
> Is there a driver that works with this NIC and if so how do I install it?
>

To answer my own question, I found the driver source code on Realtek's 
website, downloaded it to my laptop's FC5 system, consulted the Fedora Core 
5 release notes, and figured out that Realtek built the Makefile correctly. 
Attempted to compile it. Compile failed. I Googled and found a page some 
kind Gentoo soul had put up with instructions on how to fix 3 lines of the 
source code. Attempted second compile which failed because I wasn't root. 
Attempted a third compile, and all went well. Put the source code tarball on 
my USB flash drive and plugged this into the new computer which is an Athlon 
64 X2 machine. Transferred tarball to my home directory, installed 
kernel-devel from the FC5 DVD, then did an insmod using the parameters 
suggested by the Realtek readme. No joy. Did a plain insmod r1000.ko, and 
pow! Eth0 came up! Now downloading 696 Mb worth of updates. I bet a lot of 
this is i386 garbage from FC4....but what the heck, my new machine is 
getting updated...

Bob Cochran