Driver Driven

Finding the solution to the Realtek driver issue became important, because I also discovered that the USB ports were not functional, which could also be related to the absence of proper drivers.

Googling for Realtek 8169 directly, I discovered that there were many who had faced the same problem - of the system inaccurately installing the wrong driver. The chipset was the 8168, but Linux used the 8169 driver automatically. Besides the readme instructions, I found anothe set of steps here http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=3029998#post3029998. Following these also proved futile.

While in Opensuse, I managed to successfully complete the steps, in Mandriva 2008 I was stopped midway with a "invalid module format" error on using the insmod command.

Temporarily, I have given up the pursuit, and have resigned to opt the easier way out, that of using the discrete lan card. The USB will also have to wait.

What makes this entire ordeal unacceptable is that Belenix, an Opensolaris distro, seems to have no problems in this front (but it fails in other aspects). The reason : this issue is based right in the core, the Linux Kernel itself.