Dear Maintainer,

I am using Debian Testing on my desktop PC, which uses a Realtek ethernet chipset.
My internet connection would regularly disconnect (usually for a minute or less, sometimes it stayed disconnected until I restarted my computer).

I ran the following command and found the output said I was using a mis-matched kernel driver for my ethernet chip:

lspci -k | grep -A3 Ethernet
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller (rev 05)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 7d45
        Kernel driver in use: r8169
        Kernel modules: r8169

r8169 I assume is used to cover a number of chipsets. But mine was 8125, and it did not like it.

I switched ethernet drivers using this package:
r8125-dkms/testing,testing,now 9.016.01-1 all [installed]

After installing that package I no longer had issues with my ethernet. I believe this chipset should be set to use the 8125 driver by default, to prevent this.

An additional note about my troubleshooting that may not be relevant: I did some wrong troubleshooting steps before installing that package (thanks AI) so I ended up blacklisting my previous driver r8169, to prevent it from loading in first. That was before I discovered that debian had a package with the driver conveniently available. I may still have that blacklist enabled, preventing 8169 from loading.


Thank you for your attention.
I'm sorry if I sent this to the wrong place, I wasn't sure what "package" my default kernel ethernet driuver would be.

Hi Nathan,
You're doing everything right.
Due to an unfortunate state of affairs, it is intentional that there are two different drivers for this hardware. Allow me to explain.
 • In spite of the name, the r8169 driver is intended to support a wide variety of Realtek Ethernet chips, including yours. This driver is developed by the community and is part of the Linux kernel. The quality of the code is good, so it's easy for folks to report bugs, try out fixes, and add on support for new Realtek chips. Most importantly, it's possible for anyone interested to modify the code to suit their needs, which is an important part of free/libre software—what we're all about at Debian. This is the best driver for users to use first.
 • On the other hand, the r8125 driver comes from the folks at Realtek who made the chip. Legal issues prevent it being a proper part of Debian. Additionally, the code contains "blobs", sequences of "magic numbers" that change the code on the network card. No one outside of Realtek is able to tell what these actually do, and that's a barrier for anyone wanting to fix problems. The folks at Realtek don't usually release datasheets or technical information that's needed to understand how the cards work. Realtek does not generally incorporate user feedback and their driver may not always work with the latest kernel version. In spite of all of this, the r8125 driver is offered in the non-free section of the package archive as an option for users to try if they want to.

I am glad that the r8125 driver is working for you. It looks like the default r8168 driver is *supposed* to work for your network chipset, but as you've found that's not true. I'd like to get more information to figure out what's gone wrong, so I can do some detective work and try to make this work better for other users.

Could you open a terminal emulator and run this command:
	reportbug -p --template linux-image-$(uname -r) | tee ~/kernel-info.txt

This will create a text file in your home directory called kernel-info.txt with a lot of information. You can skim through that to make sure there's nothing private and then send it back here. Thanks and let me know if you need help

P.S. for kernel folks: these are the most similar upstream issues. The problems are with older packages or missing/outdated firmware, so these ought to be surmounted in testing already.
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=214371
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217362

Package: src:linux
Version: 7.1.3-1
Severity: wishlist
X-Debbugs-Cc: nathanhubbardmail@gmail.com

This is a response to John Scott's post, specifically:
"Could you open a terminal emulator and run this command:
reportbug -p --template linux-image-$(uname -r) | tee ~/kernel-info.txt"

Thank you for the details, and that makes sense, I'd rather use the Libre
myself so it makes sense to use it so it gets improved.

If you'd like me to switch back to the normal driver and test things, I can
do that. I think I'd just remove that 8125 package using apt, and make sure
I'm not blacklisting 8169.

Worth noting this issue existed through atleast the last several kernel
updates. I only started using Debian Testing maybe three months ago I think.
Here is the rest of the output from kernel-info.txt: