It's not that Ubuntu thinks it's an 8169, it's that the default driver r8169 should work for both the 8169 and 8168 phy chipsets. The r8169 is broken and doesn't work with the 8168 chipsets well at all. The r8168 isn't included by default so this is why you need to download and compile the driver from Realtek, then blacklist r8169 and insert r8168. You need to compile it on the machine that you're going to use it on, as it's kernel and architecture specific.
If you have the source files saved on a USB thumbdrive, first make sure you determine which /dev device is your USB drive with:
This will list all block devices and show their paritions and sizes. Find with /dev/sd<x> is your device (easiest by matching up the size) e.g. 8GB USB thumbdrive will register as 8GB under fdisk. Once you have the device number, you can see if it automatically mounted or not with:
This output will show you all the mounted devices and where there mount points are. If you thumbdrive is mounted it will most likely be under /media/<long UUID number>. You'll be able to correlate the mount point with the /dev number you got from fdisk. If the thumbdrive isn't mounted you can mount it manually with:
Code:
sudo mkdir /media/usb
sudo mount -t <filesystem> /dev/sd<x> /media/usb
mount (verify that the drive mounted correctly)
cd /media/usb
cp -r /media/usb/<Realtek source files> /home/xbmc
The mkdir command makes a new directory (use a name that's easy to remember) for a new mount point. The mount mount -t command mounts the drive. You may not need to give it a filetype, if it's fat32 or ext formatted you shouldn't need to. You may need to install ntfs-3g if it's ntfs formatted. The mount command all by itself just shows what's mounted and where the mount points are. You just copy the directory (recursive copy command cp -r) to the xbmc home directory and then follow your previously linked page to compile the kernel module and insert it. The autorun.sh script should do that all of that, looks like you'll need to do a
As the script needs elevated privileges to work.
If the script, for whatever reason doesn't work, post back. I have instructions for manually compiling the r8168 driver, inserting it, and making sure it comes up with every reboot. I've had to go through the procedure a couple of times with my HTPC.
Actually, this is why I can't use Openelec. They have the r8169 kernel module statically compiled in and my NIC is completely unstable with it. Because Openelec is built as an appliance, you can't compile your own drivers and make them work.