6.6.1 Crashes

I would highly advise updating your motherboard BIOS as Eric had suggested as well.  This could help us narrow down the cause to either something in the kernel that requires more investigation or something as simple as a BIOS fix that is unrelated to the software.  Unfortunately motherboard manufacturers don't tend to provide extensive details on what their BIOS fixes are actually resolving, so its impossible to say whether or not that is the culprit, but considering how trivial it is nowadays to update a BIOS (I would imagine it can be done right from within the BIOS over the Internet), I don't think it's too much to ask.  Especially considering that vague description (improve system stability) is still fitting for the issue you're having (a lack of system stability).

Oh and as for the Realtek and disabling it, if there is no option in the BIOS itself to disable the NIC, then just leave it unplugged.  As long as it isn't being utilized, it shouldn't be a problem.  If we still suspect stability issues as a result of merely loading the driver for the Realtek NIC, then we can give you instructions on how to "stub" the driver for the NIC so that it prevents it from loading as well.

13 hours ago, rjstott said:

How would I disable the Realtek card

It looks like there is an option to disable it in your BIOS under Advanced menu --> Onboard Devices Configuration --> Realtek LAN Controller

So here is an update. I upgraded the BIOS but it made no difference as far as I can tell. I still got a crash. (I can not say that all these crashes are identical but the symptoms are). So I have now added an Intel PCI network card as the main network interface and I guess the other interface is at least not being used.  I am running 6.6.3 so I now need to wait and see. 48 hours was about the limit previously so we're at 7hrs and counting.

The issue is talked about here:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/t/

 

Bottom line, a regression was introduced to Realtek driver, then a "fix" was created that seemed to work (which is in our kernel), but you are finding that it does not 100% work.

 

This kind of thing happens all the time with Realtek.  We are hesitant to just come out and say there are some hardware vendors to avoid, but certainly Realtek and Gigabyte would be on that list - but we don't have a list.

I don't think we've proved the network card as the culprit yet have we?  However, coincidentally my Plex problem has gone away and that did look like a network issue! Let's give it a couple more days.

 

I hear what you say about Realtek but they are very common chips on Asus boards. I agree that fixing a Hackintosh problem which also runs on an Asus board did take a very long time!!

10 hours ago, rjstott said:

I hear what you say about Realtek but they are very common chips on Asus boards.

They are very common on lower end board from all manufactures since they're cheap, higher end Asus board usually use Intel NICs.

Just thought I'd update this thread. It is three days now without a problem so 'fingers crossed' I guess we should attribute this failure to the Realtek drivers in the latest releases. I can't honestly say the problem is solved because I've got around it by adding a replacement Ethernet card. I would also add that the Plex issue has also gone away.

 

Just in case this is tripping anyone else up it manifests itself as either a reset of the the Plex client application (on my Samsung TV) or a network error stopping the media playing. No amount of changing the source of the material or how it was presented to the client fixed the issue.

 

Now 1/11/2018 and no further failures. So the Realtek problem is I guess not fixed in 6.6.3 (at least for me)

Edited November 1, 2018 by rjstott
Update