BeagleBone ethernet troubles libphy

[vwyoda]

I just got a BeagleBone and I am running into ethernet issues, which I am not totally sure what the cause is. But I think I am on the right track in finding out the cause.

I have ethernet on boot, but its painfully slow. It starts a connection at normalish speeds for the network its on, then it continually drops until it gets to run around a 5kb average.

While playing around trying to track down the cause I used netcfg to restart the interface and got this output.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '[51592.116701] libphy: PHY 4a101000.mdio:01 not found
[51592.121857] net eth0: phy 4a101000.mdio:01 not found on slave 1 ')

I checked in the kernels modules and it is truly missing, is there a reason this module is not being built? Is this even the cause for my troubles? The thing I noticed is that I can not get ethernet to work anymore unless I reboot after running the netcfg tool.

This is the module I was looking for that I believe it is referencing as missing
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'kernel/drivers/net/phy/libphy.ko.gz')

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions. Thanks for your time and help.

[WarheadsSE]

Libphys must be built-in, or it wouldn't come up with that message. It is saying the device is not there.

[vwyoda]

OK guess that was a wrong guess to the cause then.

What other things could be causing super slow speeds on ethernet? Or am I not understanding what its saying its missing?

Thanks

[pepperdas]

I'm having the same trouble. I'm going to try downgrading to an older kernel image to see if that helps, following up with this thread. For whatever reason, when I booted to a Uboot command prompt I was able to ping the beaglebone through my ethernet cable, which tells me this is not necessarily a hardware issue. I think that a lot of people have been having similar issues with the beaglebone and beaglebone black, but I HAVE seen some reports of eth0 working (albeit they were about 8 months old).

I think that if the older kernel doesn't work you should be able to get some sort of return on the device...It's a total drag but maybe it's necessary, the ethernet just doesn't work. People have been complaining about the same issue using the original Angstrom image, it's not arch's fault.

I'll report back with how I do.

EDIT: I also found this on the beaglebone website...


Etherent PHY Default Configuration [A3,A4,A5,A6]
The mode pin setting for mode bit 2 connects to the wrong pin on the LAN8710. It goes to pin 15 and should go to pin 14 instead. This should not cause any operational issues as the internal registers are set correctly in Uboot by the default SW that is provided. If you are not using UBoot or have a custom UBoot, you will need to set the register inside the LAN8710 for proper operation. There is a preepmtion issue in SW that is currently being worked. There was a theory that this error was causing the issue. As long as you set the correct values in your initialzation code, this will not cause this issue and as the default UBoot correctly sets the register correctly for all modes and auto negotiate enabled which is what the default mode was intended to be.

[PLyttle]

I'm not sure the pin 15 pin 14 issue relates to the Black. Apparently this was for the A3,A4,A5,A6 "white" boards. It's also clearly indicated on the schematics of those boards.

For what it's worth, I have no speed issues, I'm using Arch with kernel 3.8.13-bone21 with the following drivers enabled:
CONFIG_NET_VENDOR_TI=y
CONFIG_TI_DAVINCI_EMAC=y
CONFIG_TI_DAVINCI_MDIO=y
CONFIG_TI_DAVINCI_CPDMA=y
CONFIG_TI_CPSW=y
# CONFIG_TI_CPTS is not set
CONFIG_PHYLIB=y

my u-boot is compiled for am335x_evm_config from version u-boot v2013.04 with the 0001-am335x_evm-uEnv.txt-bootz-n-fixes.patch
and some tweaks to the bootcmd, (primarily to include i2c mw 0x24 1 0x3e; )

I'm using the default netctl configuration "ethernet-dhcp" from the examples
This works, provided ethernet is available at boot. Enabling it at runtime does not work for me

This is dmesg output for ethernet at boot-time

[ 12.377014] net eth0: initializing cpsw version 1.12 (0)
[ 12.384935] net eth0: phy found : id is : 0x7c0f1
[ 12.389888] libphy: PHY 4a101000.mdio:01 not found
[ 12.394933] net eth0: phy 4a101000.mdio:01 not found on slave 1
[ 12.407489] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
.
.
[ 15.462845] libphy: 4a101000.mdio:00 - Link is Up - 100/Full
[ 15.468856] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready

Apart from the starting-stopping problem I have no complaints.

LP

[PLyttle]

Update,

tried it with the stock u-boot and kernel 3.8.13-3. No change in behaviour
everything works, but only when connected at boot-time

LP

[pepedog]

Are you running netctl? Copy an example to /etc/netctl. Remove symlinks in /etc/systemd folders that begin netcfg or netctl, then
systemctl enable netctl-ifplugd@eth0
Make sure ifplugd is installed

[PLyttle]

That worked... sort of

but the start command will still not result in configuring the IP-4 address
a lease is requested and given, but not acted upon
the first time it works, (either boot or plugin) but not thereafter
maybe the stop command does not do it's job correctly

I probably need some more time to wade through the configuration scripts

LP

[pepedog]

It's only meant for start or first hotplug.
Static will work I think

[PLyttle]

In that case it works brilliantly

LP