Banana Pi booting Ubuntu minimal 6.18.24 - too slow for network

[Norfolk]

Armbianmonitor:

https://paste.armbian.com/itepatorej

Hi,

 

FYI, there might be an issue with old, slow hardware. Yesterday I installed the minimal Ubuntu 26.04 current 6.18.24 downloaded from https://armbian.com/boards/bananapi on my old Banana Pi on an similar old 8GB SD by sandisk.

 

It runs normaly, but cannot set up the end0 during booting.

 

Doing an "ip link set end0 up" manually on cli afterwards immediately activated end0, so my solution was using an script to do this command after booting. The AI aiding me thinks it's just the slow hardware causing a timeout when it should set up the interface during booting.

 

Just wanted to let you know.

 

 

 

 

[eselarm]

I see in your log:

[   15.439789] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: Register MEM_TYPE_PAGE_POOL RxQ-0
[   15.466497] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: PHY [stmmac-0:01] driver [RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet] (irq=POLL)
[   15.677165] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: Failed to reset the dma
[   15.758481] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: stmmac_hw_setup: DMA engine initialization failed
[   15.772254] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: __stmmac_open: Hw setup failed

If I look at my bpi:

root@banlipi:~# dmesg | grep ethernet
[    3.767952] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet: IRQ eth_wake_irq not found
[    3.774414] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet: IRQ sfty not found
[    3.780287] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet: PTP uses main clock
[    3.894850] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet: Version ID not available
[    3.902941] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet:    DWMAC1000
[    3.907950] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet: No HW DMA feature register supported
[    3.915196] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet: TX Checksum insertion supported
[    3.922008] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet: Normal descriptors
[    3.927689] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet: Ring mode enabled
[    5.766296] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: renamed from eth0
[   19.418540] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: Register MEM_TYPE_PAGE_POOL RxQ-0
[   19.465510] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: PHY [stmmac-0:01] driver [RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet] (irq=POLL)
[   19.476982] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: No Safety Features support found
[   19.484490] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: RX IPC Checksum Offload disabled
[   19.491897] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: No MAC Management Counters available
[   19.508289] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: PTP not supported by HW
[   19.514967] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: configuring for phy/rgmii-id link mode
[   23.717977] sun7i-dwmac 1c50000.ethernet end0: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control rx/tx
root@banlipi:~# uname -a
Linux banlipi 6.18.35-current-sunxi #1 SMP Tue Jun  9 10:28:53 UTC 2026 armv7l GNU/Linux

So no DMA related problem. The AI advise is nonsense IMO; There might some (longterm) hidden bug/issue in the sunxi kernel when running on bananapi as mine usually hangs after a few days with a kernel paging issue, root cause I don't now. BUT, now tha I am challenging this with 24/7 kernellogging via serial console, 'it does not wanna crash':

root@banlipi:~# uptime
 14:32:05 up 7 days, 18:13,  1 user,  load average: 0.07, 0.14, 0.12

I must say only thing it does is read out the AXP PMU values every 10s and pushes that into influxDb. Maybe I should hook up a SATA SSD or HDD and see if I can repeat.

 

Maybe doe upgrade, so you get newer kernel (6.18.35): 

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

 

[Norfolk]

I already did the apt update & upgrade, it actually seems like the 6.18.35 did solve that issue - or at least, that's how I'd read the newer "armbianmonitor -u" as posted here:

 

https://paste.armbian.com/orawuzawun

 

PS: I didn't test again if it works now without the script for reasons of lack of access to the bananapi + local screen + local keyboard in case it still came up without end0 - bot the output of armbianmonitor at least doesnt show up that failure you pointed at.

Edited 1 hour ago by Norfolk