Odroid H2+, Realtek RTL8125B drivers

    • Official Post

    I can look into the vendor-binary driver, but as r8169 already detects the chip (but cannot make it work) we'd also have to patch out that behaviour to avoid a driver clash. This might acheive that: [net-next] r8169: rename RTL8125 to RTL8125A - Patchwork but that patch also shows support is being worked on (albeit at an early stage) so something might appear upstream sooner than later, in which case it would be preferrable to wait patiently for a few weeks and then backport some patches instead of adding a vendor driver to our codebase.

    Hello chewitt

    I am new to linux, but still can experiment and research.


    LibreELEC Generic is currently on 5.7-rc1 (linux (Generic): update to linux-5.7-rc1)

    *edit* No wait, we are on 5.7.6 (linux: bump to 5.7.6)

    Was the netdev patch you mentioned above merged into the kernal?

    I checked the kernal Changelog and till 5.7.8 (July 9th) there is no mention about RTL8125B

    What are some of the steps I would need to take to try the patch above?

    1) Get latest kernal

    2) Merge patch & build custom kernal (if it is not in kernal)

    3) Build a custom LibreELEC

    *edit*

    Firmware for RTL8125B was added into the 20200619 release of linux-firmware.

    There was a pull request for LibreELEC.

    I need to figure out where the get a nightly build of master with that change

    I tried LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-9.80-nightly-20200708-bbbb726.img.gz, but it doesn't work.


    I am not sure what to do now.

    Edited 2 times, last by YuhrOM: Updated progress on what I tried (July 9, 2020 at 11:28 AM).

    Quote from AGLyons

    So I'm sitting on about $350 of hardware I can't really do anything with.

    Quote from CvH

    better question, why does Hardkernel sells something that can't be used at release

    They knew it before release that it don't work at the moment.

    Sadly, as much as I love Linux, and as much as Linux is better today than it used to be, stuff like this is the norm.

    Linux often doesn't get driver support for the latest hardware flowing downstream into distributions and projects that people use until well after the hardware is launched. There is a habit of referring to buying new hardware as "bleeding edge" when most enthusiasts just expect the latest launched hardware to work out of box.

    It's a long history of most hardware companies - especially in the consumer world - focusing on launching with Windows driver support, and overlooking everything and anything else, with a few exceptions. Hardware targeted at enterprise tends to work better when new.

    Either way, this device would have been much better if they had just skipped the silly 2.5gbit and 5gbit standards and gone with an established and reliable gigabit Intel NIC. Realtek is never anything but disappointing, even when you have driver support.

    How do you even get to console inside LibreElec? I've tried Ctrl-Alt-F1, F2, etc., but that didn't do anything.

    Pull the drive and chroot into it from another machine?

    Edit:

    Never mind, I forgot you could enable sshd from within the GUI config screen.

    Edit2:

    Also, I was pulling a stupid. I forgot my Logitech K400 is one of those stupid devices requires me to hold on to get to the F keys.

    CTRL-ALT-F1 did something but it blanked my screen. Could be I was in console but just couldn't tell because my TV doesn't support the display mode. Not sure.

    Edited 3 times, last by mattlach (July 24, 2020 at 8:24 PM).

    Quote from chewitt

    Linux network development - Patchwork

    ^ shows that that patches I flagged were accepted, meaning they are queued for Linux 5.9, and there are no new patches which means the chipset is still not supported in the kernel. Your next move is to wait patiently.

    Any idea which kernel is targeted for the next stable release? (9.8?)

    Or are you planning on including the patches and firmware yourself in next release?

    I wonder if this will make it in there some time soon. Apart from the network chip used, this does seem like a great little board. I might just buy one to play around with

    • Official Post

    LE10/K19 first alpha will be soon and likely uses Linux 5.7 .. but this an alpha and since final release is likely months away some higher kernel version will probably be used in final releases, we'll keep bumping during alpha and won't lock things down until beta. There is no point in including the patches flagged above, all they do is establish the current driver is for the A variant and add firmware for the B variant. Until there is also driver code for the B variant there's "nothing to see here, move along please" and adding the realtek vendor driver could be done in a private build, but it won't be done for a public release as we'd need to disable the in-kernel driver globally which will affect other users with A variant hardware.

    Keep an eye on Linux network development - Patchwork and once you see patches posted, there's something to test.

    Quote from mattlach

    ...Either way, this device would have been much better if they had just skipped the silly 2.5gbit and 5gbit standards and gone with an established and reliable gigabit Intel NIC. Realtek is never anything but disappointing, even when you have driver support...

    Yeah, but Intel is also using Realtek NIC's in the NUC's maybe because the NIC's are cheaper than their own. A shame...

    ASRock in the Other hand is mostly using Intel NIC's....

    Regards

    Nicolas