I wasn't able to get the kernel to compile with just the reiser4
patches from the broken-out dir on the ftp. The patching itself
seemed to go well though. I tried to apply the patches in the order
they were listed in "series" but some had to go out of order anyway,
such as reiser4-only.patch had to go first.
However I was able to verify it's not a problem with the r8169 driver.
I copied over the r8169 driver to a fresh linux-2.6.8.1-mm4 and was
able to compile and run fine with the latest r8169 driver from the
linux-2.6.9-rc4-mm1 release. I also tested it in reverse, bringing
over r8169.c to a fresh linux-2.6.9-rc4-mm1 and it still gave me the
oops.
I'm not sure where this leaves me now. Perhaps I should repost my
oops and my proc info in the lkml with a different subject to draw the
attention of others, since I now know this subject to be entirely
missleading.