# The buggy Realtek r8169 driver

**URL:** <https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/the-buggy-realtek-r8169-driver/3003>\
**Category:** Rocky Linux Help & Support\
**Created:** [June 19, 2021, 3:10pm UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/the-buggy-realtek-r8169-driver/3003 "2021-06-19T15:10:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![terrigan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/da6949/32.png) [@terrigan](https://forums.rockylinux.org/u/terrigan)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2021, 3:10pm UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/the-buggy-realtek-r8169-driver/3003/1 "2021-06-19T15:10:29Z")

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Long time Centos fan here watching with great happiness as Rocky Linux evolves. I have the current RC dual booting on a separate hard drive on my home rig and unfortunately it has an older network chipset, the Realtek r8168. On the stock kernel, I am able to get a network connection for a unspecified amount of time and then it drops. If i bring the card down and up again it would usually resolve the issue although quite annoying when you’re trying to work or do things like stream.

I tried the current ml and lt kernels as well and it doesn’t seem like the 8168 gets an IP with either of them. I know the 8168 is old but is support being dropped for it in the 5.x kernels? I was considering the age of the computer and just getting a PCI-e NIC and not even worrying about this old Realtek.

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**Author:** ![markvnl](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forums.rockylinux.org/markvnl/32/914_2.png) [@markvnl](https://forums.rockylinux.org/u/markvnl)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2021, 7:07pm UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/the-buggy-realtek-r8169-driver/3003/2 "2021-06-19T19:07:05Z")

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Hi @terrigan,

It’s a while ago I’v struggled with the Realtek r8168, moreover it was on el7;

IIRC installing [kmod-r8169](http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-r8169) and blacklisting the kernels internal r8168 driver kind of made it work.  
It would not surprise me the (Linux) kernel dropped the quirky r8168 driver in 5.x

Hope it helps you

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**Author:** ![GZU](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forums.rockylinux.org/gzu/32/981_2.png) [@GZU](https://forums.rockylinux.org/u/GZU)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2021, 1:05am UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/the-buggy-realtek-r8169-driver/3003/3 "2021-06-20T01:05:03Z")

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Hi @terrigan  
You may want to check out the elrepo repositories (see below)  
kmod-r8168-8.048.03-2.el8\_4.elrepo.x86\_64.rpm 03-Jun-2021 15:54 150624  
I recently found a working driver for an old device.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/rockylinux/original/1X/91b7219eec10e30013422e4df76c1d898711a5d5.svg) [@system](https://forums.rockylinux.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2023, 4:44am UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/the-buggy-realtek-r8169-driver/3003/4 "2023-08-24T04:44:46Z")

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