[realtek] Promiscuous mode wedges rtl8139 driver?

[Bart Schaefer]

Trying to resolve my networking problems with the eepro100 on my CA810EAL
motherboard (see message on the eepro100 list) I disabled the onboard LAN
from the BIOS and installed an SMC 1211TX PCI card and switched to the
rtl8139 driver.

This initially works OK at system boot, though it does not appear to have
prevented the system from locking up occasionally (which must mean the
eepro100 wasn't to blame in the first place, I guess).

Now when I start up my VMware virtual workstation, networking stops
working entirely; this is a new problem seemingly not related to my
previous lockups, as this worked with the eepro100, in spite of the other
errors emitted by that driver.

/var/log/messages reports:

Apr 16 14:20:05 aztec kernel: eth0: Promiscuous mode enabled.

This is being enabled by the `vmnet' driver to allow it to receive packets
destined for the virtual workstation.  If I run `network restart'
networking is restored to the host Linux (RedHat 6.2, kernel-2.2.17-14)
but of course not to the virtual workstation.

The driver I have is from netdriver-2.1-3.src.rpm, which I notice has now
been removed from ftp.scyld.com; there's now netdrivers-2.1.6-1.src.rpm,
which is slightly newer but appears to have the same version of rtl8139.c.

Advice appreciated.