No more ethernet with linux... Android connection is fine?!?!
#1
Question 
Hi,

Pine64 with 2G memory and the wifi/bluetooth pcb on, DC-in through the euler-bus.

Recently I was only using android 5.1.1 for its stable wifi connection and decided to try again the linux images for the added apps... Surprisingly ethernet is not working anymore on the linux images I tested: Longsleep's old xenial-pine64-bspkernel-20160507-1, newest xenial-pine64-bspkernel-20160716-1, xubuntu-xenial-mate-20160528-longsleep-pine64-8GB, Armbian_5.20_Pine64_Ubuntu_xenial_3.10.102...
For some reason linux builds do not recognize/work with the ethernet connection anymore...

Regarding Longsleep's console-only images, I have to wait few minutes for the login thing to appear. For the 'desktop' images, I login then it says that I'm not connected... It happens even if the cable is connected directly to the main router (no switch). I'm 200% sure that it was working before, I installed Mate from Longsleep's console image...

What is going on?!?!
#2
(10-21-2016, 04:23 AM)cr2016 Wrote: Hi,

Pine64 with 2G memory and the wifi/bluetooth pcb on, DC-in through the euler-bus.

Recently I was only using android 5.1.1 for its stable wifi connection and decided to try again the linux images for the added apps... Surprisingly ethernet is not working anymore on the linux images I tested: Longsleep's old xenial-pine64-bspkernel-20160507-1, newest xenial-pine64-bspkernel-20160716-1, xubuntu-xenial-mate-20160528-longsleep-pine64-8GB, Armbian_5.20_Pine64_Ubuntu_xenial_3.10.102...
For some reason linux builds do not recognize/work with the ethernet connection anymore...

Regarding Longsleep's console-only images, I have to wait few minutes for the login thing to appear. For the 'desktop' images, I login then it says that I'm not connected... It happens even if the cable is connected directly to the main router (no switch). I'm 200% sure that it was working before, I installed Mate from Longsleep's console image...

What is going on?!?!

I suspect that you have your pine board plugged into a gigabit switch|router ?

... some of the pine boards ( if you have not heard yet ) do not work ( GbE ) when plugged into a gigabit router|modem|switch.  There are two work-arounds which will allow the pine board to work at 100 /Full with no problem:

1) modify the cable (my choice) and cut|remove the blue and brown pairs leaving only the green and orange pairs ( wires  1, 2, 3, &6 ).

2) use the ethtoo command to force 100mb/s:

      sudo ethtool  -s eth0 autoneg off speed 100 duplex full

Option (1) above works because the negotiation for 1000 /Full requires all 8 wires... without them only 100mb/s is possible.

Option (2) above works because the negotiation can be forced with software to set 100 /Full.

There is also a third option:

3) place a 10/100 switch between the pine board and the router|modem.
marcushh777    Cool

please join us for a chat @  irc.pine64.xyz:6667   or ssl  irc.pine64.xyz:6697

( I regret that I am not able to respond to personal messages;  let's meet on irc! )
#3
That is really strange, I have to use the "modified" Ethernet cable for all my versions of Android, but for Ubuntu, I am using a standard cat 6 Ethernet cable feeding into a gigabit switch. This is using my 2gig board.

As you can see from my video, using my 2gig board, from the kickstart project, I am able to use this board as my Emby server. The purple Ethernet cable is an unmodified cat6 cable going into my gigabit switch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59_SfaBLGdk
#4
(10-21-2016, 05:11 AM)clarkss12 Wrote: That is really strange, <snip>

Please do not hi-jack this thread. The OP is going to be confused as it is, and we don't need the thread further confused with other stories. Thank you.
marcushh777    Cool

please join us for a chat @  irc.pine64.xyz:6667   or ssl  irc.pine64.xyz:6697

( I regret that I am not able to respond to personal messages;  let's meet on irc! )
#5
Yes... sure... I heard about the GbE problem/bug... Might have it but did not really check!

My main surprise is that the ethernet was working before with the same configuration, whatever the speed... And now it's not working anymore... Not just with one distro, with all of them, at least the ones I tried.
And as far as I know the GbE problem is not solved yet... still building defective boards?!?!
Anyway...will try to solve this because I really would like to use this board as a second PC!

Thanks for your reply Marcus!

Edit: it's indeed strange... some distro are working for some people, not for others... Some config are fine for some people, not for others... Looks like the boards are all different!
#6
(10-21-2016, 06:35 AM)cr2016 Wrote: Yes... sure... I heard about the GbE problem/bug... Might have it but did not really check!

And as far as I know the GbE problem is not solved yet... still building defective boards?!?!

Correct. 

... the last I heard the problem had been confirmed to be hardware ( the engineers have several boards to investigate ) and they were trying to mitigate the failures with software... still no resolution, and yes, still building defective boards;  at least some of the replacement boards still have the issue.
marcushh777    Cool

please join us for a chat @  irc.pine64.xyz:6667   or ssl  irc.pine64.xyz:6697

( I regret that I am not able to respond to personal messages;  let's meet on irc! )
#7
ethtool... command not found... (armbian and Longsleep's image 20160507-1).

Anyway, I connected again the pine directly to the router (or what ever it is called, I mean the main output from the wall) with another normal cable and same result: works fine with android but no ethernet with an image that was working before Undecided

Looks like I have to sacrifice an ethernet cable to try out.
#8
Looks like the "network hardware and/or software" is modified when I switch between android and linux OSs...

My main PC is dual boot win7/mint18, the pine64 runs either android 5.1.1 or a Longsleep-based linux. Both units are connected to the same switch, this switch is connected to the cable-modem.
Whatever the OS, the main PC gets the ethernet connection fine through the switch-modem.
As for the pine64: if I change the OS between linux and android (i.e., from linux to android or from android to linux) it is mandatory to unplug/re-plug the modem to get an IP!!!

I first started to test the pine64 with Longsleep-based linux images, then tried more recently the android one for its stable wifi. I could not get any ethernet connection when going back to linux, even with the pine64 connected directly to the modem (cf my previous posts)... Until I decided to restart the modem... And it looks like I have to do it every time I want to change between these OSs.

Wondering what is going on.
#9
Maybe your router/modem doesn't like the fact that the MAC address on the ethernet is changing every time you switch between linux and android? Although that shouldn't really matter since you need to power down the board before removing the card and changing OSs, so i would have thought that resolved it issue. As far as long delays with the longsleep images without the ethernet plugged in, that is sue to /etc/network/interfaces listing auto eth0 instead of allow-hotplug eth0, making it so the init process waits for 5 minutes before continuing if there is no ethernet cable plugged it.

Are you able to get the wifi up on linux on a internet connected wifi network? Then you could run sudo apt-get ethtool so you don't need to neuter a ethernet cable.
#10
I will try again to get a working hotspot with linux... Likely with new SD cards to be ordered...

As far as I understand the ethtool is used to restrict the eth connection to 100MB instead of the supposed-to-be-working 1GB. Or, are there any goodies coming when using it?


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