As requested by the R8169 maintainer, I tested the driver under a variety of configurations of stock kernel 2.6.15, as well as a version with a maintainer-provided spinlock patch. (Note: the patch applies with fuzz 2 against the stock kernel tarball.) Each configuration was booted with a Netgear GA511 PCMCIA Gigabit NIC inserted, but no ethernet cable connected. A soft hang resulted in each case, and I then did Magic SysReq-P. The hang ended when I ejected the card.
For each of the configurations below, I have provided links to the kernel config file, the dmesg output, syslog output (/var/log/messages from the last restart to the end of the file), and a copy of r8169.ko. I have also included a link to a .deb file containing the entire kernel build in question.
I hope this information is of use in tracking down the bug; if anyone has any clues, please let me know --- I'm happy to conduct additional tests or provide additional information. Thanks!
| # | Patched? | SMP? | Preempt? | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | No | No | Yes | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 2 | No | No | No | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 3 | No | No | Voluntary | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 4 | No | Yes | Yes | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 5 | No | Yes | No | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 6 | No | Yes | Voluntary | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 7 | Yes | No | Yes | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 8 | Yes | No | No | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 9 | Yes | No | Voluntary | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 10 | Yes | Yes | Yes | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 11 | Yes | Yes | No | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |
| 12 | Yes | Yes | Voluntary | uname config dmesg syslog r8169.ko deb |