I left out the answer to one of your questions. Yes, the firmware-realtek package is installed. It is version 0.28+squeeze1. During my temporary 3.2 backports kernel experiment, I also upgraded all the firmware packages to the matching version from backports.
This may be indirectly significant - in the 2.6.30 kernel version where everything worked on auto, I did not need a firmware package. I don't know if this is because a blob wasn't being used, or if that was before Debian had completely moved such blobs out of main. I was able to install lenny without putting the firmware on a flash disk. Starting sometime after 2.6.30, the firmware package is required or the NIC doesn't work at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
