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Bug#864562: No ethernet link on Olimex A20-Olinuxino Micro Rev. J, possibly PHY driver problem



On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 09:07:47PM +0200, Jean-Louis MOUNIER wrote:

> I tested the link on several switches (3 at least) before opening the bug.
> So I think the problem is really located on the PHY detection and
> management.
> 
> I validated the hardware by testing with pre-installed Debian MicroSD, as
> recommended by Olimex.
> 
> Now the test you ask (on a 4th switch !):
> 
> dhcp
> 
> Speed: 100, full duplex
> 
> BOOTP broadcast 1
> 
> ...       (from 1 to 17)
> 
> then restart with "speed: 100" and so on...

So the same problem shows up in u-boot, not only in the kernel.

> Small remark : I did manage a complete installation by using a USB-Ethernet
> interface (shipped from Olimex). It ran fine with Jessie but failed with
> Stretch. My goal was (is ?) to have an A20 server that boots from its hard
> disk.
> I could not restart it ! It didn't boot from the hard disk. Perhaps it is
> necessary to boot from MicroSD then switch to hard disk. Not a hard failure
> : my first goal was to run a full install ! I will try again ASAP.

The Allwinner A20 itself cannot boot directly from a harddisk, it
always has to boot from either an MMC device (such as an SD-card
or an eMMC chip), from an SPI flash chip, from a raw NAND flash
chip or via the Allwinner-specific FEL protocol over USB. 
Therefore u-boot must always be loaded by one of these methods,
with the common case being an SD card.  Once u-boot is loaded, it
provides the option of booting the rest of the system from a
SATA harddisk, from a USB mass storage device or over the network.

The order in which u-boot tries to boot from the various devices
is set in the "boot_targets" u-boot environment variable.
You can show it at the u-boot prompt with the following command:

=> printenv boot_targets
boot_targets=fel mmc0 scsi0 usb0 pxe dhcp

If you want the change the boot order, e.g to make the harddisk
the primary boot device, you just need to modify the variable
accordingly ("scsi0" is the harddisk, even if you actually
have a SATA disk and not a SCSI disk):

=> setenv boot_targets "scsi0 mmc0 usb0 pxe dhcp"

and save the change with

=> saveenv

Regards,
Karsten

P.S.: Please send replies regarding the bug always also to the
      bug itself (i.e. to 864562@bugs.debian.org) and not only
      to the personal email address of people working on it.
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