Ethernet device runs for about 3-5 min, then stops
Here’s the error: r8169 error ipfire - Pastebin.com
I had this problem with it in arch linux, the fix was to install the r8168-dkms driver and it worked and ran for hours. Is there any way to install the r8168 kernel modules or am i going to have to build them out myself?
You have to build them. If these drivers are free software you probably should open a bug report ticket so that the developers might include them in future versions. See this bug report as possible a model.
Hi,
welcome to the IPFire community. 
Oh well, Realtek again. 
Their drivers are a real mess, and since they do not bother getting them into the Linux kernel - or the kernel maintainers refuse to take them due to quality issues -, we compile some of these Realtek drivers out-of-tree on our own.
At this time, rtl8168 is not among them. While you can of course compile the driver on your own, IPFire won’t load it due to the kernel rootkit protection.
This leaves you with either building IPFire completely from scratch or (preferred) submitting a patch featuring this driver so we can pick it up and include it in IPFire. That way, all users can benefit from it. It would be even better if they complained to Realtek, but that’s a different topic…
Thanks, and best regards,
Peter Müller
Understandable, Yea, I know Realtek. I hate to bring it up. I just hate to spend all that money for decent network gear and it’s just for 2 people. Just trying to utilize what I have. I may just build my own and skip these pre-builts OSes. Thanks for the reply however
Yea, the drivers are free: Realtek PCIe FE / GBE / 2.5G / Gaming Ethernet Family Controller Software - 瑞昱半導體
But the reason why no one wants to mess with it is because it’s realtek (cheap)
Hi,
yes, I completely understand that. My testing machine has some chap Realtek NICs as well…
Well, if you consider building IPFire for yourselves, I would really like to encourage you to work on a patch instead. The required effort is not much greater, and it would help a lot.
Thanks, and best regards,
Peter Müller
I’ll look into it. My time is sorta limited. I was able to get the driver compiled into arch. I don’t know much about the building process of IPFire as I haven’t really kept up with it. Funny thing is on pfSense, it’s the same issue. After a little buzzing around, it seems the r8169 driver hasn’t been updated in about 10 years and even Linux distros as well as freebsd are using the same old driver… It’s amazing…