Network adapter disappeared after kernel update

so I did a little searching and I don’t think this is general issue with recent updates.

Either way, my wired network disappeared after updating today. I booted back to the USB installer and booted to Windows, network works fine.

I found this in the logs from a couple of days ago:

nov 19 11:04:22 myhostname kernel: RTL8226B_RTL8221B 2.5Gbps PHY r8169-0-700:00: attached PHY driver (mii_bus:phy_addr=r8169-0-700:00, irq=MAC)

I checked the pacman.log it ran dkms for nvidia drivers and ran mkinitcpio afterwards. There are no errors and I see nothing strange.

It did upgrade this:
upgraded r8168 (8.049.02-36 -> 8.049.02-37)

But its not the same as rtl82xx that was listed in the boot log.

I can post other logs if they are helpful.

Any ideas please as to what might be wrong or how I can figure this out?

Thanks!

I downgraded the package from pacman cache, ran mkinitcpio -p linux but that didn’t solve anything.

Welcome to the forum! :smile:

Please post the output of terminal command

inxi -Na

Based on the information so far I’d guess uninstalling r8168 and rebooting would help, but don’t do that before showing the output… :wink:

1 Like

You should be using the r8125-dkms package from the AUR. I think it was using th r8169 kernel module but with the update to r8168 it failed to properly rebuild the kernel modules. I think if you install the r8125 you won’t have this issue. This is the 2.5 GBE Ethernet

3 Likes

Network working on Windows has little to do with it working on linux. :wink:

Thanks! :smiley:

Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: Gigabyte driver: N/A modules: r8169 port: e000 bus-ID: 07:00.0
           chip-ID: 10ec:8125 class-ID: 0200
           Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 08:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:2723 class-ID: 0280

I know :upside_down_face:. It was just to show it wasn’t the hardware failing or something.

Nice! Uninstalled r8168 (as it showed in use in the previous inxi -Na output), and I installed r8125-dkms from AUR. inxi -Na now shows the new module is in use and wired network is back up!

Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel modules: r8125 port: e000
           bus-ID: 07:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8125 class-ID: 0200
           Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 08:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:2723 class-ID: 0280

Problem solved!

Thanks both!

1 Like

That’s one solution, but not the easiest. r8168 blacklists r8169, and it doesn’t cover your network adapter anyway. So you can simply remove it (as you did). Then your network adapter would have worked with r8169. There’s no need to install the vendor driver r8125.

That’s what i was alluding to that it was probably working on the r8169 module. As far as being the easiest i don’t see any issue with installing r8125-dkms. It’s pretty easy and the OP shouldn’t have the issue any more. Yes he could have uninstalled the r8168 and see if it worked again.

But the op said!
“I downgraded the package from pacman cache, ran mkinitcpio -p linux but that didn’t solve anything.”

So most likely that may not have been easier. :wink:

I can try uninstalling r8125-dkms to see if it still works.

The reason I went ahead is what @ricklinux said, quoting myself; I downgraded to a package that previously worked, so I didn’t think it would work by uninstalling it. Flawed reasoning perhaps on my behalf …

Either way, appreciate all the help and I’ll let you know if it works without r8125-dkms.

It is my understanding the rtl8125 was added to the r8169 module some time ago. So by all means check it out. There have been certain issues with Realtek chips where some work on the r8168 module and some work on the r8169. Some work on both like mine. That is the reason why the r8168 package was included at the time. It does cause issues though for users who don’t have the need for it.

Uninstalled r8125-dkms and wired still works. As you can see it no longer loads the kernel module:

Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 bus-ID: 07:00.0
           chip-ID: 10ec:8125 class-ID: 0200

It does load the kernel module which is r8169. The r8168 is an additional package that is added to EndeavourOS. So removing r8168 allows it to load the r8169 kernel module. When the r8168 package is installed it blacklists the r8169 kernel module so it won’t load. That is the reason your Ethernet quit working when you got an update and it updated the r8168 package.

Edit: Hopefully this makes sense to you.

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.