Kernel for A64 git

[waldo]

This gmac kernel makes a HUGE difference.

I now have a stable GbE connection. Cpu maxes out during nfs transfers instead of sitting there waiting ...
...still not anywhere near GbE speeds but its stable at least .... I'll do some more checks tomorrow

thanks in advance !

quick edit ... some results ... http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?t...6#pid21886

[stepw]

This gmac kernel makes a HUGE difference.

I now have a stable GbE connection. Cpu maxes out during nfs transfers instead of sitting there waiting ...
...still not anywhere near GbE speeds but its stable at least .... I'll do some more checks tomorrow

thanks in advance !

Is it both TX and RX? RX remains really bad on my board...

[marcus]

Just to give some feedback, the 3.10.104-1-pine64gmac-longsleep works for me, I see consistent 100MBit (I don't have anything on my network to measure above that) download speed from my ISP where I just got around 68MBit with the unpatched version. No other regression so far, but I will let it run for a while and see what happens.

[gkkpch]

I ported the music player platform Volumio 2 to Pine64 and used patch details overlayfs.v18-3.10-rc7.patch  from https://github.com/adilinden/overlayfs-patches to create the kernel prerequisites for overlayfs.
Patching was straight forward, I have done it before for a few other sbc's like sparkySBC (allo), Odroid C2 (Hardkernel).

I now have 2 options:
- maintain our own (volumio) kernel and update with longsleep's kernel changes as long as mainline is no option
- longsleep can be persuaded to add the overlayfs patches to the BSP kernel and we can pull from there.

@longsleep: would it be possible to get these patches into your kernel?
Not sure if tllim informed you about this...

-Gé-

[androsch]

I just released a new Kernel build line "pine64gmac" which has a possible fix for the Ethernet Gigabit issue which happens on some boards. The fix is based on a patch provided by tllim (thanks!).

For now consider this a test release and you can switch to the pine64gmac Kernel line easily with

Code:

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/longsleep/build-pine64-image/master/simpleimage/platform-scripts/pine64_update_kernel.sh) latest gmac

You can switch back to the normal Kernel line with

Code:

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/longsleep/build-pine64-image/master/simpleimage/platform-scripts/pine64_update_kernel.sh) latest default

(assume the Network still works with the gmac Kernel ).

To see what changed:
https://github.com/longsleep/linux-pine6...gmactxonly


If feedback is good, this fix will go into the default Kernel. So let me know how it goes.

To check if the fix is applied on boot:

Code:

root@pine64:~# dmesg|grep 'init ephy'
[   16.070919] init ephy for pine64

Sorry, bad news, board still doesn't work in GbE even with the new kernel. Its better than before, getting at least some throughput (about 10mbits) but thats still much worse than FastEthernet (94mbits) and ways too slow for GbE. 

[ak_hepcat]

I just released a new Kernel build line "pine64gmac" which has a possible fix for the Ethernet Gigabit issue which happens on some boards. The fix is based on a patch provided by tllim (thanks!).

For now consider this a test release and you can switch to the pine64gmac Kernel line easily with

Code:

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/longsleep/build-pine64-image/master/simpleimage/platform-scripts/pine64_update_kernel.sh) latest gmac

You can switch back to the normal Kernel line with

Code:

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/longsleep/build-pine64-image/master/simpleimage/platform-scripts/pine64_update_kernel.sh) latest default

(assume the Network still works with the gmac Kernel ).

To see what changed:
https://github.com/longsleep/linux-pine6...gmactxonly


If feedback is good, this fix will go into the default Kernel. So let me know how it goes.

To check if the fix is applied on boot:

Code:

root@pine64:~# dmesg|grep 'init ephy'
[   16.070919] init ephy for pine64

Sorry, bad news, board still doesn't work in GbE even with the new kernel. Its better than before, getting at least some throughput (about 10mbits) but thats still much worse than FastEthernet (94mbits) and ways too slow for GbE. 

Androsch -   Have you swapped out your power supply with something different, and capable of supplying higher current?

I've got 5 pine64's  (2Gb + GbE)  and all of them work great at GbE speeds - the only times they had networking issues was when I was using inferior power supplies.   The ones I was originally using were rated for 5V2A and yet when I replaced them with a higher-quality supply, my networking issues went away.

[androsch]

Sorry, bad news, board still doesn't work in GbE even with the new kernel. Its better than before, getting at least some throughput (about 10mbits) but thats still much worse than FastEthernet (94mbits) and ways too slow for GbE. 

Androsch -   Have you swapped out your power supply with something different, and capable of supplying higher current?

I've got 5 pine64's  (2Gb + GbE)  and all of them work great at GbE speeds - the only times they had networking issues was when I was using inferior power supplies.   The ones I was originally using were rated for 5V2A and yet when I replaced them with a higher-quality supply, my networking issues went away.

Hi, just tried with a new 5V/3A supply using longsleeps new gmac-kernel and now its at least about

Code:

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-30.00  sec   331 MBytes  92.4 Mbits/sec  3584             sender
[  4]   0.00-30.00  sec   330 MBytes  92.4 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[  6]   0.00-30.00  sec   305 MBytes  85.4 Mbits/sec  3292             sender
[  6]   0.00-30.00  sec   305 MBytes  85.4 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[  8]   0.00-30.00  sec   333 MBytes  93.1 Mbits/sec  3467             sender
[  8]   0.00-30.00  sec   333 MBytes  93.1 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[ 10]   0.00-30.00  sec   300 MBytes  83.8 Mbits/sec  3235             sender
[ 10]   0.00-30.00  sec   300 MBytes  83.8 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[SUM]   0.00-30.00  sec  1.24 GBytes   355 Mbits/sec  13578             sender
[SUM]   0.00-30.00  sec  1.24 GBytes   355 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Its still not too good and many retries, but at least more than the old FastEthernet speed

[androsch]

Sorry, bad news, board still doesn't work in GbE even with the new kernel. Its better than before, getting at least some throughput (about 10mbits) but thats still much worse than FastEthernet (94mbits) and ways too slow for GbE. 

Androsch -   Have you swapped out your power supply with something different, and capable of supplying higher current?

I've got 5 pine64's  (2Gb + GbE)  and all of them work great at GbE speeds - the only times they had networking issues was when I was using inferior power supplies.   The ones I was originally using were rated for 5V2A and yet when I replaced them with a higher-quality supply, my networking issues went away.

Hi, just tried with a new 5V/3A supply using longsleeps new gmac-kernel and now its at least about

Code:

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-30.00  sec   331 MBytes  92.4 Mbits/sec  3584             sender
[  4]   0.00-30.00  sec   330 MBytes  92.4 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[  6]   0.00-30.00  sec   305 MBytes  85.4 Mbits/sec  3292             sender
[  6]   0.00-30.00  sec   305 MBytes  85.4 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[  8]   0.00-30.00  sec   333 MBytes  93.1 Mbits/sec  3467             sender
[  8]   0.00-30.00  sec   333 MBytes  93.1 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[ 10]   0.00-30.00  sec   300 MBytes  83.8 Mbits/sec  3235             sender
[ 10]   0.00-30.00  sec   300 MBytes  83.8 Mbits/sec                  receiver
[SUM]   0.00-30.00  sec  1.24 GBytes   355 Mbits/sec  13578             sender
[SUM]   0.00-30.00  sec  1.24 GBytes   355 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Its still not too good and many retries, but at least more than the old FastEthernet speed

OK, also added longsleeps network-script.sh to /etc/rc.local and set the governor to performance like tkaiser already suggested (still using gmac-kernel from longsleep, with normal kernel its unusable in GbE), so i now have about 500 mbits with still many retries, but i can live with that at the moment. Its much better than FastEthernet now and using this board as server for minecraft is more limitated by cpu than network now.

Thanks everybody for suggestions and support!

[MarkHaysHarris777]

~cool, androsch; excellent report.

[ak_hepcat]

OK, also added longsleeps network-script.sh to /etc/rc.local and set the governor to performance like tkaiser already suggested (still using gmac-kernel from longsleep, with normal kernel its unusable in GbE), so i now have about 500 mbits with still many retries, but i can live with that at the moment. Its much better than FastEthernet now and using this board as server for minecraft is more limitated by cpu than network now.

Thanks everybody for suggestions and support!

Next up, you can apply some local QoS to your interfaces, and see if that doesn't help you out a little.

This might get you started pretty quickly:   https://github.com/akhepcat/qdisc