Pine64 LTS - netwok driver for new hardware

[linda]

Hello,

I'm using a Pine 64 LTS with the SoPine image Armbian 21.02.3 Bionic with Linux 5.4.88-sunxi64

I have made various changes and installations to this image, so I want/need to continue using this image.

 

Unfortunately, with the new hardware of the Pine 64 LTS (Pine64 LTS-V2) network connection is no longer possible.
(Note: With the current SoPine image there is a network connection).

Is there any way to reinstall the current network drivers in my image?

 

I would be very grateful for any help.

 

[defenestrate]

The PINE A64-LTS uses LPDDR3, where the original PINE A64 used regular DDR3. to SOPINE also uses LPDDR3 and is kernel/driver compatible with the LTS, the A64, as you have seen, is not.

 

Just use SOPINE images/kernel configs. 

[linda]

I am using an old Sopine image (Armbian 21.02.3 Bionic with Linux 5.4.88-sunxi64). It works very well with the Pine LTS hardware.

However, there is a new Pine LTS hardware (LTS-V2) that seems to have changed the network chip, so with the old Sopine image it is no longer possible to connect to the network.
Is there any way to reinstall the current network drivers in my image?

How can I use the kernel configs to do this?

Thanks a lot in advance

[Alexander Ressler]

I ran into the same problem after following the pine64 wiki and downloading the latest build from November 2022.
In case anyone runs into this problem in between releases, I was able to get network support by building the latest pine64so configuration using the latest kernel option.
Follow the build steps in the readme https://github.com/armbian/build#simply-start-with-the-build-script

It takes a long time to build, but it "just worked" once I reimaged the SD card with the output ISO image. Just make sure that in the configuration menu you choose the pine64so board and pick the latest or edge linux kernel to build; I think the driver will be in kernel version 6.2.

 

Maybe about 20 or 30 minutes into the build, I could see evidence that it would work because I saw drivers/net/phy/motorcomm.o in the log output. The driver file is recently added to the linux kernel https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/net/phy/motorcomm.c

 

The message of the day displays, "Welcome to Armbian 23.05.0-trunk Jammy with bleeding edge Linux 6.2.10-sunxi64."

 

 

Edited April 12, 2023 by Alexander Ressler
adding MOTD with version info