# RTL8111E Support in 9.1-RELEASE?



## arbsd (Mar 22, 2013)

Hi all,

I just finished installing 9.1-RELEASE on an Intel BOXD525MW motherboard. The docs claim the onboard NIC is a Realtek 8111E, and looking at re's compatability list for 9.1 the 8111 is listed (though notice the *E* isn't missing... important?)

When the machine boots up, `dmesg` does in fact show the RTL8111 as present:


```
# dmesg
re0: <RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F PCIe Gigabit Ethernet> port 0x2000-0x20ff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
re0: Using 1 MSI-X message
re0: Chip rev. 0x30000000
re0: MAC rev. 0x00400000
re0: Unknown H/W revision: 0x30400000
device_attach: re0 attach returned 6
```

However, `ifconfig` doesn't show me anything:


```
# ifconfig -a
plip0: flags=8810<POINTOPOINT,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
	nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
	options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
	inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
	inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x7 
	inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
	nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
```

So, am I just out of luck, is the RTL8111*E* not yet supported? I'm guessing the "Unknown H/W revision: 0x30400000" points to "yes you're screwed", but I'm not familiar enough with how FreeBSD does drivers to know for sure.


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## kpa (Mar 23, 2013)

RTL8111 chips are generally supported by the re(4). However, Realtek has a nasty habit of changing the details of the programming interface for their NICs at every new revision of the same chip but keeping the device IDs the same. This results in just what you in dmesg(8) output, a supposedly supported device that does not actually play ball when the driver tries to initialize it.

I would ask on freebsd-stable, freebsd-hardware and/or freebsd-net mailing lists next.


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## arbsd (Mar 25, 2013)

Thanks @kpa, I'll wait another day or so and send mail.

Any idea on how fast driver updates occur for re? Am I better off picking up a supported NIC for now?


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