issue with netcard of dock gen2 of lenovo l390

[JJ Fullmer]

I am now successfully imaging with my work around method that involves using a usb 2.0 “gigabit” ethernet adapter following the method I outlined here many moons ago.

Since the device is able to be imaged with a different ethernet adapter, I’m thinking that maybe there’s just a new driver that needs to be added to FOS. I have tried to find a .efi driver for this device but haven’t been able to find it available for download and there isn’t a way I have yet found to extract it from the built-in lenovo efi drivers. Maybe there’s a kernel option we can add in building that will help. I am very sure though that it’s tied around FOS and this lenovo usb-c ethernet adapter chipset. It will pxe boot just fine but then there are issues after that. It gets further along in the latest version of FOG than @jps is running but it isn’t quite working yet. Just need to find a way to add full support for this adapter and then this will be fixed.

[george1421]

@JJ-Fullmer Ok if we want to look deeper into the network adapter, can you provide what windows sees as the hardware ID for this troubled nic? We’ll need the vend_id and the hareware_id to cross it to a linux driver.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421
Hardware ID - USB\VID_17EF&PID_720C&REV_3000
I’m not seeing the Vendor ID, but the driver Provider is realtek

The offical lenovo doc page can be found here https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/accessories/acc100324

I believe this is the page for the dock that this post and another is using that uses the same chipset/usb-c connection https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/accessories/acc500106

It looks like there are firmware updates for the dock option available here https://download.lenovo.com/cdrt/wp/usb-docks.html and there may be other helpful information, but it looks mostly centered around windows

It is also possible that the usb-c port is what needs a new linux driver. There are also 2 usb-c ports on the device I believe, one that has power delivery and one that does not, I did not try both ports.

[george1421]

@JJ-Fullmer said in issue with netcard of dock gen2 of lenovo l390:

I’m not seeing the Vendor ID, but the driver Provider is realtek

Ugh, realtek… nuff said…

Will you boot in FOG Linux debug mode and key in lsusb and post the output here. (sorry I forgot it was a usb network adapter).

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 I will when I image the next one, which might be today might be tomorrow.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421
This is what I see when I tried to boot to fog on the second one. Same usb-c adapter, same model, same just updated bios version. It isn’t the same ethernet cable but it’s connected to the network through the same switch. I did reboot my fogserver (adding more space for an unrelated issue), so there’s an outside chance something changed at the fogserver dhcp level, but unlikely.

However I was able to register it in the gui and then it gave similar output when booting to a debug task, said it didn’t get an ip via dhcp and then the fog debug stuff came up…Don’t I require a network connection to get the network hosted FOS system on the machine via pxe? ifconfig in the debug session makes it look like it indeed doesn’t have an ip, however the usb-c ethernet adapter is blinking. The ifconfig devices don’t show one with the macaddr of the usb-c. All of that is really just to say, this is why I’m not copy pasting text output and just putting a screenshot.

I can do much more debugging on this tomorrow. We ordered the alternate ethernet adapters to see if they work better natively on these devices, they use an intel chipset. But I’m happy to do all I can to make the usb-c ethernet on these work for everyone, as that’s a better answer than go spend more money on a different proprietary adapter

[george1421]

@JJ-Fullmer Ok as we already know its a realtek 8153 chipset. From the lsusb command its the first one [17ef:720c].

Not detecting a carrier is something that seems to be symptomatic of this linux kernel driver with this chipset. Looking at the kernel code it looks like the RTL8152/8153 is at version 1.10.10 and I’ve found a driver on github at 2.12 https://github.com/wget/realtek-r8152-linux

Looking at the torvalds github site (if that’s real), it looks like the r8152.c driver was updated 22 days ago adding a device ID for the Lenovo Thinkpad USB-C dock Gen2 (which may address the OPs issue). https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/net/usb/r8152.c

It may be worth it to pull this r8152.c driver and rebuild the FOS Linux kernel to see if it changes anything.

[george1421]

@JJ-Fullmer The r8152.c from the torvalds github site failed to compile on 4.19.65, I’m suspecting its for a later release of linux. The version from the torvalds site was 1.10.10. The version in 4.19.65 was 1.9.9 of the realtek driver.

I was able to compile the realtek driver from the wget github site. This version is 2.12. Here is a link to that kernel with the 2.12 driver built in. I also enabled the usb-c code in the kernel that appears to have not been set. I don’t know if its relevant, but it should be on for other applications. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wZwwOwbEr0nR3mnPLKg7AsulwJaGhO0A

Download this as bzImageRT (watch your case) and copy it to the ipxe directory with the other kernel images. Manually register the host and then in the host definition add in bzImageRT as the kernel for that host. Then pxe boot into FOS Linux debug mode to see if the network adapter inits correctly with this updated driver.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 I’m on it! Thanks for doing all that!

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 That done did it!
It imaged correctly as expected, huzzah! No problems at all.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 said in issue with netcard of dock gen2 of lenovo l390:

@JJ-Fullmer The r8152.c from the torvalds github site failed to compile on 4.19.65, I’m suspecting its for a later release of linux. The version from the torvalds site was 1.10.10. The version in 4.19.65 was 1.9.9 of the realtek driver.

I was able to compile the realtek driver from the wget github site. This version is 2.12. Here is a link to that kernel with the 2.12 driver built in. I also enabled the usb-c code in the kernel that appears to have not been set. I don’t know if its relevant, but it should be on for other applications. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wZwwOwbEr0nR3mnPLKg7AsulwJaGhO0A

Download this as bzImageRT (watch your case) and copy it to the ipxe directory with the other kernel images. Manually register the host and then in the host definition add in bzImageRT as the kernel for that host. Then pxe boot into FOS Linux debug mode to see if the network adapter inits correctly with this updated driver.

@jps Please give @george1421’s kernel a try, see if that fixes your problems.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 I posted your solution on two other posts that appear to be related issues

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/13203/l390-yoga-lenovo
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/13909/can-t-find-network-interface-kernel

There they are for reference for anyone finding this or those in the future.

[george1421]

@Developers here is what I did

1. Probably not related to the issue at hand. Enabled usb-c support in the kernel. The kernel was 4.19.65
   enable_usb-c.patch.txt

2. I downloaded the 2 files from this url: https://github.com/wget/realtek-r8152-linux and copied them to linux-4.19.65/drivers/net/usb/ overwriting what was there (note I appended .txt to allow uploading to the forum).
   r8152.c.txt
   compatibility.h.txt

3. Recompiled the kernel using the 1.5.7 base config file from the fos github site.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421
I would probably bet that adding usc-c support helped more than we know. I’ve just never had this good of an experience with a usb-c adapter and fog. Just my 2 cents.

Do you see any reason that one shouldn’t use this kernel for all devices?

Also, another side note to my Fellow Lenovo L390 owners. If you set the Mac Address Passthrough option in the bios to “Second Mac Address” you can get a unique mac address for each device that uses that usb-c adapter or dock to image with fog so you won’t have issues with duplicate macs. However if you set it to “Internal Mac Address” it replicates the internal card which confuses ipxe that there are 2 network cards with the same mac address and it tries a ‘net0’ device twice failing both times.

[george1421]

@JJ-Fullmer said in issue with netcard of dock gen2 of lenovo l390:

Do you see any reason that one shouldn’t use this kernel for all devices?

There is no reason why you shouldn’t use this kernel. This is exactly the same kernel that ships with FOG 1.5.7 with the exception of the updated realtek driver and adding in the usb-c stuff.

I started with the default FOS Linux settings for 1.5.7 and made the changes I posted. This was done so that the devs could duplicate what was done during our testing.

I’ve just never had this good of an experience with a usb-c adapter and fog

It would be interesting to see if your experiences with usb-c change with this kernel.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 I’m making it my default kernel now then, I backed up the old one of course. I’ll report back if there are any problems, but I would assume all will work as expected.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 so some odd things to report with the new kernel as the default…
One almost plus, I found that an acer switch 3 recognized the lenovo usb-c ethernet adapter as one that could pxe boot. It even almost worked but it is now frozen at ipxe initialising devices... In the past, no usb-c ethernet adapter would do a native pxe boot on this device, so that’s something. I guess I still don’t have one that will do a pxe boot.

I went to image a new surface go with the microsoft usb-c ethernet adapter that was working in the past.
I got this message after pxe boot completed and FOS was starting…

Sorry that it’s blurry, basically it says that the kernel is probably missing the correct driver. Doesn’t make a ton of sense that the fix for one usb-c ethernet adapter would break another. It isn’t impossible that microsoft’s adapter also uses a realtek chip and this chip doesn’t like the new driver. Why can’t they all just get along?

I will try testing the old kernel and other things tomorrow.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 I did do a test on a normal device (intel ethernet desktop type) and it did boot to the fog menu and started an image deploy without a problem on the new kernel. I set the surface go to use the old kernel (I have so many now I’m not actually 100% sure which one it is, but pretty sure its the one that shipped with 1.5.7) and it is now imaging properly, meaning that the new kernel does indeed fix one usb-c adapter and breaks a different one. I’ll get the details on the microsoft ethernet adapter if you want them tomorrow.

[george1421]

@JJ-Fullmer Well what I can do is this. I can reset the FOS Linux kernel back to 4.19.65 base then only apply the usb-c changes to see if its the realtek driver or the usb-c changes causing the troubles. If you have the hardware to test on.

The other thing as like you said, we’ll need the nic vendor and hardware ID either from windows or via FOS Linux lspci or lsusb depending on how the nic is attached.

[JJ Fullmer]

@george1421 Let the fun begin then, I have 4 of these that I need to setup today.

the hardware ID in windows is USB\VID_045E&PID_0927&REV_3100
I’ll get the linux bit shortly