Unable to find PHY

[Sesse]

Hi,

 

I have a Sovol SV08 printer, which is based on BTT CB1 (to the point of basing its software on the CB1 image). I've upgraded it to bookworm, and then installed the latest current Armbian kernel (I eventually would want to go entirely upstream Linux, but I believe that this isn't feasible yet); linux-image-current-sunxi64 24.8.4 (6.6.44-current-sunxi64). Everything largely works and I can print etc.; however, the wired Ethernet refuses to come up. It just repeats this over and over again:

[15101.594239] sunxi-gmac 5030000.ethernet end0: No PHY found!
[15101.602516] sunxi-gmac 5030000.ethernet end0: phy init failed
[15103.394666] sunxi-gmac 5030000.ethernet end0: No PHY found!
[15103.400460] sunxi-gmac 5030000.ethernet end0: phy init again...

 

I haven't been able to figure out what PHY is the right one, but I guess this is some sort of device-tree issue? For testing, I checked that this issue is still present on the lastest edge kernel (6.11.2-edge-sunxi64), which I built myself (which took forever, by the way, since cross-compiling from x86 seems to be broken…). It has exactly the same issue, and also that it cannot find the thermal sensor (“deferred probe pending: platform: wait for supplier”—with no actual supplier listed—and then no more).

 

Does anyone know if there's a missing module somewhere? Or DT binding? This works with the BTT stock kernel (5.16.17-sun50iw9).

 

armbianmonitor -u: https://paste.armbian.com/ruyucamuwu

[JohnTheCoolingFan]

Well, the situation is that a proper ethernet driver for btt cb1 is not available and we have to use a different driver and rely on u-boot to bring the PHY up. We have been able to provide working PHY in the current branch, but not on edge. From what I remember it's a known problem and current uses a workaround I mentioned earlier. I've tested ethernet and it is working on a BigTreeTech Pi 1.2, which should be identical to a cb1 on the carrier board. From what I could find the mainboard of Sovol SV08 does seem to be similar, so I'll re-test the image. Getting ethernet to work was a very finnicky effort and it would be very bad if it doesn't work.

UPD: works on my end, looks like there might be some difference in your hardware. Even if a small one. Unless the board's peripherals are the exact same as on a BigTreeTech CB1, I can't properly verify and debug the problem on my end and we will have to do that remotely.

[Sesse]

I'll be happy to help with remote access to the printer if needed. The Wi-Fi works fine, so it's available over IPv6, or I can bounce you in via some IPv4 port forward or similar. (Getting serial console access would be possible but pretty cumbersome; the header is not readily accessible on the mainboard, and the mainboard itself is not readily accessible without turning over the printer.)

 

I don't think the printer uses an actual physical CB1 mounted on top of a larger board, FWIW, more like the CB1 chips (H616 and associated stuff) are designed in a part of the mainboard.

[Sesse]

Also: I don't use any updated U-Boot, just the one that came already installed with the BTT image. So I guess there's no special PHY init from there; I could probably get another eMMC card and flash the official Armbian image to check if that works? (That would take a week or two in the mail, though.)

[JohnTheCoolingFan]

Yeah, try the official armbian image, which includes u-boot bootloader. You can also back up the emmc data as an image, then flash the official Armbian image, try it, and then flash the backup if you want. But I think using the official Armbian image so that the appropriate u-boot is used would be best. It's fine by me to wait for the new emmc. Also, when I said remote, I meant having you try out different images and sharing the logs, not remote access over internet.

[Sesse]

I installed the latest Armbian U-Boot, and lo and behold, the Ethernet came up!

 

[   14.058967] sunxi-gmac 5030000.ethernet end0: end0: Type(7) PHY ID 00441400 at 0 IRQ poll (5030000.ethernet-0:00)

 

For posterity, this is what I did:

 

sudo apt install linux-u-boot-bigtreetech-cb1-current

sudo FORCE_UBOOT_UPDATE=yes bash -x /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-u-boot-bigtreetech-cb1-current.postinst

 

So I'm going to mark this as resolved. Next up is the thermal zone in that edge kernel, but I should probably do that in a separate topic…