Replacement driver available for RTL8129/RTL8139 based ethernet cards

Details:

A new driver is available to replace the 8139too driver for ethernet cards based on Realtek's RTL8129 or RTL8139 PCI ethernet chips.

With at least one particular RTL8139C card, the 8139too driver causes the system to hang. The rtl8139 driver by Donald Becker does not exhibit this undesirable behavior.

Kudzu is a hardware probing tool from RedHat. The updated kudzu package associates ethernet cards based on RTL8129 or RTL8139 with the new driver.

Updated packages:

SME/Alpha V5.5
SRPMS:
kudzu-0.99.2-4smea.src.rpm [ via HTTP ]	a57601917affd366c7de5458bf168c38
rtl8139-0.01-2.src.rpm [ via HTTP ]	c294277aaa1f25e8717588064f0d2c95
alpha:
kudzu-0.99.2-4smea.alpha.rpm [ via HTTP ]	40dd07a1a2934e1c68c61218eef381cf
rtl8139-0.01-2.alpha.rpm [ via HTTP ]	2b9c20d57e3583eb475c23a6b29ac23c

Solution:

This bug may cause system startup to fail and/or disable the internal and/or external interface. If your SME/Alpha server and gateway is in an unusable state because of this bug, take the following steps to restore it to a usable state:

1. Download RPMS and put them on a floppy.
2. Start up your SME/Alpha server and gateway and press "i" for interactive startup when prompted.
3. Do not start any services except "syslog" and "keytable".
4. Log in as root, insert floppy and mount it:
   # mount /mnt/floppy
5. Install RPMS from floppy:
   # rpm -Uvh /mnt/floppy/*.rpm
6. Log out and in again as admin, configure your network interface(s) for the new driver.