Gumstix Wired Network not Working

[bryantraywick]

I have a Gumstix Overo with a Tobi board for networking and with the latest image from http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/gumstix-overo and I am having problems with wired networking.

Out of the box with the default configuration and using netcfg it fails to get an IP address entirely. After following the instructions to disable IPv6 on the "Wired networking stopped working on Gumstix" thread, I was able to get an IP but after a few seconds I am no longer able to make network connections. Running "ifconfig" indicates that eth0 still has an IP but incoming ssh connections and outgoing pings and and all other network connections fail. If I restart netcfg networking works for a few more seconds and then stops again.

I was able to copy a 3.4.4-1 kernel (just the uImage) from an older image I made in early January and networking seems to function correctly. I get an IP and am able to make network connections even after hours of running. It seems that something has changed with the smsc911x driver between the 3.4.4-1 and 3.7 kernels. I experienced this behavior with the January 21st(?) image as well.

I would just stick with the 3.4.4 kernel and will probably have to but I am also having trouble getting ifplugd and net-auto-wired.service to correctly detect an ethernet cable being plugged in. Looking at the jouralctl log I can see '/etc/ifplugd/netcfg.action eth0 down' being executed when the cable is unplugged but '/etc/ifplugd/netcfg.action eth0 up' doesn't appear to be executed when the cable is plugged back in. I even tried to use NetworkManager to manage the connection but it fails to re-enable networking when the cable is plugged back in as well.

I can provide any logs you think might be of use in diagnosing this issue. Thanks.

[WarheadsSE]

Sounds very similar to the beaglebone issues some people have been seeing with having to down/up the interface to get it working right @ boot.

[bryantraywick]

I tried the down/up service and I experience the same issue. I can get an IP address with netcfg with or without the down/up service as long as I have IPv6 disabled but if I try to ping google.com I get 6 responses pretty consistently before all networking stops working. If I run "systemctl restart netcfg" I can ping google.com again but after about 4-6 responses it stops working again.

[Brainsource]

I experience the same problem, but my system totally fails to get MAC address, i.e. the ARP protcol consistently times out when asking for some address. I will try entering stat MAC address, see if it helps.

[Brainsource]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Brainsource', 'I') experience the same problem, but my system totally fails to get MAC address, i.e. the ARP protcol consistently times out when asking for some address. I will try entering stat MAC address, see if it helps.

[bryantraywick]

After googling around for issues with the smsc911x ethernet drive, I found some issues dating back to 2009 and as recent as July 2012 with bringing the interface back up when the cable is unplugged and plugged back in. The mailing list posts I read mentioned that it was due to a bug in the SMSC PHY driver that puts the ethernet chipset into a low power state when the network cable is unplugged and that it has issues resetting or re-initializing when the cable is plugged back in.

I built a 3.7.5 kernel and 3.4.4 kernel with CONFIG_SMSC_PHY=n in the kernel config and both kernels exhibited the same behavior they did before with that option turned on. The 3.7.5 kernel gets an IP but all networking quits working after a few seconds and the 3.4.4 kernel works successfully until the cable is unplugged and plugged back in, after which the interface never comes back up.

The serial console doesn't appear to work with the 3.4.4 kernel so I have no way to manually disabling the interface and bringing it back up after I plug the ethernet cable back in, but I'm going to attempt to write a service that tries to ping itself using the ethernet interface's IP address and if the ping fails periodically attempt to bring the interface down and back up. I don't know if that will work and it is a hack until I can investigate the datasheets and the smsc911x driver more carefully to see what exactly is going on.

At least for now I have working networking with a 3.4.4 kernel I just have to reboot the gumstix if the cable is unplugged.