4.20-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know. ------------------ From: Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@xxxxxxxxx> [ Upstream commit 11287b693d03830010356339e4ceddf47dee34fa ] This soft dependency works around an issue where sometimes the genphy driver is used instead of the dedicated PHY driver. The root cause of the issue isn't clear yet. People reported the unloading/re-loading module r8169 helps, and also configuring this soft dependency in the modprobe config files. Important just seems to be that the realtek module is loaded before r8169. Once this has been applied preliminary fix 38af4b903210 ("net: phy: add workaround for issue where PHY driver doesn't bind to the device") will be removed. Fixes: f1e911d5d0df ("r8169: add basic phylib support") Signed-off-by: Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- drivers/net/ethernet/realtek/r8169.c | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) --- a/drivers/net/ethernet/realtek/r8169.c +++ b/drivers/net/ethernet/realtek/r8169.c @@ -714,6 +714,7 @@ module_param(use_dac, int, 0); MODULE_PARM_DESC(use_dac, "Enable PCI DAC. Unsafe on 32 bit PCI slot."); module_param_named(debug, debug.msg_enable, int, 0); MODULE_PARM_DESC(debug, "Debug verbosity level (0=none, ..., 16=all)"); +MODULE_SOFTDEP("pre: realtek"); MODULE_LICENSE("GPL"); MODULE_FIRMWARE(FIRMWARE_8168D_1); MODULE_FIRMWARE(FIRMWARE_8168D_2);