The custom r8169 driver is unfortunately not working in my case. My elcheapo rtl8169 is recognised as with a pciid 10ec:0169, so I added an entry in simple.map to load the custom driver made by open virtual drivers. The driver attempts to load but returns an error, nic is not functioning.

I'm booting (running, not installing) from a usb-stick and put the modified oem.tgz directly on the stick in Ubuntu.

Unfortunately the ahci driver is also not working with the onboard Ali sata M5289 controller. I had hoped that since the M5288 is listed in simple.map (10b9:5288), the M5289 should work too, but alas. Already tried changing between sata and raid-mode, but made no difference.

hmmm weird stuff, turns out the nic was somehow not properly recognised, my bad.
Now it's correctly identified as 10ec:8169 and the custom driver works!

Unfortunately the other issue still remains (M5289).

Do you see any error messages in /var/log/messages about the M5289 controller?

In the config log it says:
failed to load module 'ahci': invalid argument

and a little further down:
loading module ahci failed. Exec of command '/sbin/vmkload_mod /mod/ahci.o' succeeded, but returned with non-zero status: 1

The drivers that come with ESX(i) tend to be a bit older so it may be that the driver is not able to support this controller. If you have a spare box around you would set that up as a iSCSI or NFS host and run your VMs on that.

Would you have an option to put the controller in IDE or legacy mode? You might be able to get the IDE driver to load for it.

Unfortunately no option for legacy mode or IDE mode.

I rather keep the datastores local. Tried NFS under windows 2003 server once, but keeps locking up (a known memory issue which MS probably won't ever fix). I have some spare controllers lying around, which are supported out-of-the-box by esxi (adaptec 1210 and silicon image 3114), but it would have been nice if the onboard sata controller was usable (gives me another free pci slot).

My Apologies for digging up an old topic

I just need a question answered

Does anyone else have a RTL8169 which does not detect a cable plugged in?
I bought and installed a new RTL8169S

The open virtual driver picks it up without a problem, except that vmnic1 continually shows as "Down"

Very frustrating

See if this helps - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_3 ... sues.php#6

WOW!

As simple as disabling ACPI/APIC!

Killer Tip thank you!

Glad to hear it helped.