Ethernet down on DreamPlug installer

[Philippe Clérié <philippe@gcal.net>]

I have been unable to bring up Debian on my DreamPlug with recent Jessie 
and Stretch installers. That DreamPlug has been in use for several years 
now with no problems.

Anyway, here is the sequence of events, as it were:

- eth0 is plugged into a switch
- Plug in to power
- uboot starts but eth0 remains down
- Linux loads and the interface is brought up (lights on)
- Installer starts with language choice. Select English
- Installer then starts detecting hardware: eth0 goes down
- Installer attempts to get DHCP address: eth0 stays down

And it stays down no matter how often I try or whether I ignore it or 
whether I configure manually.

I've confirmed that u-boot env does contain mac addresses for both 
interfaces.

u-boot version:

U-Boot 2013.01.01 (May 10 2013 - 06:32:54)
Marvell-DreamPlug
gcc (Debian 4.6.3-12) 4.6.3
GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.22

I tried this with current installers (downloaded today) on 
ftp.us.debian.org for Jessie and Stretch.

Thanks for any clues.


--
Philippe

------
The trouble with common sense it that it is so uncommon.
<Anonymous>