Dear Maintainer,

I tried installing debian 10.2 on an Olimex Lime 2 device
(Alwinner A20 armhf). Although the ethernet interface was detected,
the networking did not work at all – the DHCP network setup failed,
so I tried to connect it to a PC and look at the ethernet
communication with wireshark, and it seems that no ethernet packets
ever leave the device.

The same problem persists after installation and boot – the
eth0 interface shows up, ethernet connect/disconnect events
show up in dmesg, but the networking does not work in reality.

I have tried the install also with another A20 device (Lamobo R1)
and I had exactly the same problem (none of the 5 detected
interfaces worked). Same issue also with the daily builds,
so I guess this will be a more general problem related to A20.

The networking works fine with Armbian (I tried the image from
https://dl.armbian.com/lime2/archive/Armbian_19.11.3_Lime2_buster_current_5.3.9.7z
), but I would prefer vanilla debian.

Best regards,
Marek Nečada

Hello,

Marek Nečada, le ven. 27 déc. 2019 02:41:17 +0200, a ecrit:

Possible the board needs some non-free firmware?
Did you try to install firmware-linux-free?

Also, please post how the network board is detected (e.g. the complete
dmesg output).

Samuel

Hello,

Samuel Thibault kirjoitti 27.12.2019 klo 9.42:
Yes, firmware-linux-free was apparently installed during the base install.

See dmesg_install.out for the dmesg output obtained at the end of
installation and dmesg_postinstall.out for the output of dmesg in the
installed system. It seems the system does not attempt to bring eth0 up
during the boot; the following lines appear only after manually running
ip link set eth0 up (with ethernet cable connected):

[  671.988940] Micrel KSZ9031 Gigabit PHY stmmac-0:01: attached PHY
driver [Micrel KSZ9031 Gigabit PHY] (mii_bus:phy_addr=stmmac-0:01, irq=POLL)
[  671.992969] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet eth0: No Safety Features
support found
[  671.992989] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet eth0: RX IPC Checksum
Offload disabled
[  671.993003] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet eth0: No MAC Management
Counters available
[  671.993013] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet eth0: PTP not supported by HW
[  671.993972] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
[  674.023384] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet eth0: Link is Up -
100Mbps/Full - flow control rx/tx
[  674.023444] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready

Then I get the Link is down / up messages correctly after the cable is
disconnected / connected, but the network does not work nevertheless
(dhclient does not get any response; I didn't try wireshark on the other
end of the cable with the installed system, but I assume it's the same
as with the installer).

Marek

         ... about three hundred lines ...


Quoting https://linux-sunxi.org/Olimex_A20-OLinuXino-Lime2#GMAC_u-boot_config

 GMAC u-boot config

 From Revision H onward, the Lime2 comes with a Microchip KSZ9031
 gigabit ethernet phyceiver. These need the following line added to the
 u-boot config (in configs/A20-OLinuXino-Lime2_defconfig):

 CONFIG_GMAC_TX_DELAY=3

 Do not set this to another value but 3.

 This Microchip PHY chip is also getting significantly hotter than the
 old Realtek RTL8201CP PHY.


Please report back how usefull this message was.


Groeten
Geert Stappers

Hi,

Geert Stappers kirjoitti 27.12.2019 klo 19.24:

So I tried to build u-boot myself with the CONFIG_GMAC_TX_DELAY=3
directive, and I also tried to blindly copy the SPI+bootloader from an
Armbian image (in which the networking works properly), but in neither
case networking works (the other aspects are fine, the system boots
without problems, so I assume I did not break anything myself).

So I guess the issue lies elsewhere than in u-boot (perhaps the kernel?).

Marek