France was work this time

Home now and on the system I'm building I created a file, /etc/sysconfig/modules/r8169.modules, with:

modprobe r8169

in it and made it executable. No need to play around with the firewall as the module is loaded before the firewall starts.

BTW, it looks like they (Fedora/RHEL) are discouraging us from using rc.local because with systemd there is no guarantee when the file gets executed and it could run before various services have started which your program you're calling from rc.local may require. Typically the example I see quoted is that networking may not have started. In this case of loading a NIC module I don't see that you care as you want your module to be loaded before you can properly use your networking.

Nick - assume you are on holidays? - enjoy France. Visited there on many occasions when I lived in the UK. Also lived with a french family for several days near Bordeaux who owned their own vineyards... Happy memories...

I have posted a solution using "insmod" from the "weak-updates" directory that works - I'm sure there are alternatives...

Hi Tony, I am in France and posting from my notepad so I can't check my system and searching is hard. The solution I used was the one you found for ip_set. I can't remember the details but may have been to create an r8169.modules file in /etc/sysconfig/modules with "modprobe r8169" in it. I would appreciate it if you can post the solution or I will do it when I'm home tomorrow.

I checked my box of spare NICs and found a TP-Link TG-3269.

My experience was the same as Nicks - the driver didn't load automatically. Maybe it has something to do with the fact I also have two r168s in this system. Don't have the time to pursue this...

Anyway, assuming ClearOS 7.x, loading the driver using
# insmod /usr/lib/modules/3.10.0-327.22.2.v7.x86_64/weak-updates/r8169/r8169.ko
was successful (This could, for example, be added to /etc/rc.d/rc.local).

lspci -vk 

... cut

00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)

        Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8169/8110 Family PCI Gigabit Ethernet NIC

        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17

        I/O ports at a800 [size=256]

        Memory at fbeff400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]

        Expansion ROM at fbec0000 [disabled] [size=128K]

        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

        Kernel driver in use: r8169

... cut

Configured the interface for dhcp and connecting a cable provided this in /var/log/messages

Oct 11 13:59:48 sandra kernel: r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 6.020.00-NAPI loaded

Oct 11 13:59:48 sandra kernel: r8169 0000:00:0a.0: PCI: Disallowing DAC for device

Oct 11 13:59:48 sandra kernel: r8169: This product is covered by one or more of the following patents: US6,570,884, US6,115,776, and US6,327,625.

Oct 11 13:59:48 sandra kernel: eth0: RTL8169SB/8110SB at 0xffffc90010e28400, 00:23:cd:b0:4a:3b, IRQ 17

...

Oct 11 14:11:48 sandra kernel: r8169: enp0s10: link down

Oct 11 14:11:48 sandra kernel: IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): enp0s10: link is not ready

Oct 11 14:11:49 sandra kernel: r8169: enp0s10: link up

Oct 11 14:11:49 sandra kernel: IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): enp0s10: link becomes ready

Oct 11 14:11:50 sandra dhclient[7754]: DHCPDISCOVER on enp0s10 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5 (xid=0x52e38ec5)

Oct 11 14:11:50 sandra dhclient[7754]: DHCPREQUEST on enp0s10 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 (xid=0x52e38ec5)

Oct 11 14:11:50 sandra dhclient[7754]: DHCPOFFER from 192.168.3.29

Oct 11 14:11:51 sandra dhclient[7754]: DHCPACK from 192.168.3.29 (xid=0x52e38ec5)

Oct 11 14:11:53 sandra dhclient[7754]: bound to 192.168.3.89 -- renewal in 273 seconds.

Subsequent tests shows this NIC is working OK...

ifconfig enp0s10

enp0s10: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet 192.168.3.89  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.3.255

        ether 00:23:cd:b0:4a:3b  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)

        RX packets 2628  bytes 567006 (553.7 KiB)

        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0

        TX packets 1182  bytes 1157324 (1.1 MiB)

        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

        device interrupt 17  base 0x8400  

This is the driver rpm I used...
http://www.sraellis.tk/kmod-clearos7/kmod-r8169-6.020.00-1.v7.x86_64.rpm

UPDATE:
Found the following at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local to consistently bring up the NIC

  /usr/sbin/insmod /usr/lib/modules/`uname -r`/weak-updates/r8169/r8169.ko && /usr/sbin/ifup enp0s10 && /bin/systemctl restart  firewall.service &

That should all be on one long line, "enp0s10" is on my system, change to suit. If you upgrade your kernel I would suggest using yum to reinstall the driver.

It looks like the NIC uses the r8169 driver so it should just work out of the box. Having said that I had a problem with my own compiled driver for this NIC and it would not load automatically for some reason. There is a way round but let's check first.

What is the output of:

lspci -k | grep Eth -A 3

lsmod | grep r816