Reminder: Ubuntu did not make nor sell the problematic hardware.
Normally, ASUS --and many other OEMs-- would send hardware to Canonical for testing as part of the “Ubuntu Certified Hardware” process. They know how to do this. It’s routine.
If ASUS didn’t do that routine step, then customer ire seems properly directed at them. They took your money. They promised you Linux compatibility.
You have already been talking to the support community.
The next step to “let Ubuntu/Canonical know about this” is a bug report instead of a chat with a “official/manager”. Issues like these occur regularly. The bug tracker at launchpad.net is how issues of all types get reported, triaged, prioritized, worked, and tracked.
Of course, ASUS could easily send that bug report, too. They have the technical people to make the bug report bog-simple.
Thanks, @ian-weisser, for your additional explanation on this, and the other help you gave by clarifying my Topic Name.
I will try ASAP to file the bug report myself, and I will not waste my time, or anyone else’s time, trying to find out why ASUS hasn’t convinced Ubuntu a long time ago to provide the version of the RTL8125 driver that actually works, since it seems that many people have known for many months (years?) about the problem and the fix.
It really isn’t up to ASUS as it is a Realtek ethernet device and support has been added to newer upstream kernels to support more of the RTL8125 variants in the r8169 kernel module. I am not real familiar with r8169 but I wonder if they could just pull all the recent upstream commits and have more devices function with r8169 in the Ubuntu kernels
Thanks for broadening my horizons, and setting me on a path (a bit tortuous, but an exciting adventure that turned out well) that enabled me to at least try to help.
… and there has been considerable chatter regarding the facts: my RTL8125 shows in lshw and that *-network section says
driver=r8125 driverversion=9.014.01-NAPI
… but I run
sudo apt list --installed > NUC14Ess-installed-packages.txt
… and in that file I use a known good text editor to search for r8 or 81 and it finds some occurrences (which proves it’s working) but no relevant ones, which seems to confirm that I do not, in fact, have have any r8… or any 81… packages.
“Curiouser and curiouser! said Alice” (and I).
Thanks again to all who have helped on this, and to all who will help.
For the next 3 days or so I will be away from the NUC that is in the starring role in this thread. I can check email and text messages and get phone calls. I hope to be back late Sunday Central US.
I just realized as I was falling asleep that you may be assuming I did all (6 or so) of those commands you sent me a few days ago relating to dkms. I have not started them; I have been overwhelmed with the complexity and brokenness of Ubuntu’s bug-reporting environment, and I have other obligations, and thus I have not had enough time available to be confident I could finish reliably and report results. Sorry.
Should I go ahead and do those ASAP (it can be no earlier than Monday)?
BTW, there has been a lot of interesting results posted in that bug-report thread; I recommend you check it out.
What do you think is broken about simply needing to call ubuntu-bug linux ? (which collects all logs and required info the respective package maintainer needs automatically and only requires you to write a small description and a title)
The fact (I have documented it while following the instructions in two different [ubuntu.com] WWW pages) that it refuses to actually execute as described.
A new user (as I am) is led into a dead-end with no visible means of actually posting a bug report. That process begins with the fact that the ubuntu-bug command refuses to run without a package name that actually exists on the target machine (again, in spite of instructions to the contrary), and if the user does not know that the problem software (in this case the r8125 driver) is not actually a package, there is no way out. I just kept looking and finally found a way to post a bug report without using ubuntu-bug at all.
I have been thinking about posting on this problem also, but I have not had enough time yet to do a good job of it.
All the kernel modules (read: “device drivers”) are, in fact, part of the kernel (thus the nomenclature). So the package is simply linux. Pretty simple. And even if you don’t get it right, someone will move it to the right package.
I will try that when I get back to town and have some time in front of the NUC, if it seems that it will help others to learn more about how all this stuff works.
My system is working fine the way it is; the only reasons I’m still working on things and posting my observations are these:
I’m trying to improve the existing situation for others
I keep learning stuff by so doing, and I agree with the philosophers’ opinion that “all education is beneficial”.
Indications are (mostly posts by apparent experts on my Ubuntu bug report) that all I need to do is upgrade to 25.04, that will wipe out any temporary fixes I have installed, and I will be back on the normal path.
I wouldn’t bother with 25.04 it likely isn’t even a beta yet and only gets 9 months support, just install the r8125-dkms as that will still work after updating the kernel
OK, I’m ready to try to help more, but as everyone on this Topic knows, I don’t understand the function of the actions being recommended; I simply follow them blindly and report results so others can derive useful information and pass on benefit to to others. Therefore, I must ask, probably mostly of @Jeremy31 :
Should I first do
… a way to use dkms, go into the r8125/src directory in the file manager and right click in an empty space and create a new file, name it dkms.conf and paste in
Save the file, then open terminal cd r8125/src sudo dkms add . sudo dkms install r8125/4.1
To anyone else that my find this also do echo "blacklist r8169" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/r8169.conf
… and then
do sudo apt install r8125-dkms
… and if not those two things in that order, then what?
And when, if ever, during this installing and testing stuff, should I re-boot and/or re-run dkms status and/or do other testing, and how do you want me to post the results?
@Jeremy31, what does [quote=“Jeremy31, post:23, topic:55551”]
the r8169 kernel module [/quote] have to do with the r8125 driver and/or the function (or dysfunction) of my RTL8125 Ethernet device? Is there also a Realtek 8169 Ethernet device, and is it possibly (or certainly) affected by the same flaws we are discussiong in this Topic?
All you should have to do is sudo apt install r8125-dkms and reboot
The r8169 driver has some coding in it for another device similar to yours in this kernel and I suspect that your ethernet is supported in a newer kernel by r8169, we had to blacklist that just to avoid any conflicts between it and the new module for now.
