On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 02:40:14PM +0200, Karsten Wiborg wrote:

Hi Heiner,

On 30/06/2019 11:12, Heiner Kallweit wrote:

quoted

Indeed the MAC is missing:
[    2.839776] r8169 0000:02:00.0 eth0: RTL8168h/8111h,
00:00:00:00:00:00, XID 541, IRQ 126

This works with RTL8168h in other systems, so I'd say you should
check with the vendor. Maybe it's a BIOS issue.

Tested some more. Found out that the Realtek-supplied r8168-8.046.00 is
buggy (compilation bugged out, see one of my last mails). I just
succeeded in compiling r8168-8.047.00, which ran straight out of the
box. So the NIC is fine and not defect.

I do agree with you: I definitely would prefer an opensource driver but
the r8169 simply didn't work.

In regard of my success with r8168-8.047.00, do you still think it might
be a BIOS-issue?

Hi Karsten

What MAC address do you get with the vendor driver? Is it the same MAC
address every time you reboot, or does it look random.

The BIOS is expected to program the MAC address into the hardware. It
could be that the vendor driver is checking if the MAC address is
valid, and if not, picking a random MAC address. The mainline driver
does not do this.

       Andrew