issue with netcard of dock gen2 of lenovo l390

[jps]

Hello,
I have a problem with the card of the dock lenovo L390 yoga. I have an old version of fog (5929) but i don’t think
that’s related to that

[Daniel Miller]

Probably not directly related to the version of FOG, but the version of FOG would influence the version of the kernel initially used for FOS which determines the supported hardware. If you haven’t updated the kernel since installation, you might want to try one of the newer ones (4.19.64 I think is the latest stable one) to see if that takes care of things. Documentation for updating the kernel is on the Wiki: Kernel Update.

[george1421]

Daniel is spot on here. Since you are referencing a 4 digit number I’m suspecting the version of FOG is pretty old.

What I want you to do is from the fog server navigate to the following directory /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe Once you are in that directory key in file bzImage This will print out the FOS Linux version number. I will be something like 4.X.X. Lets start with what version you are on to know what version you can safely upgrade to.

Also if you have a windows computer that can successfully boot on this hardware, go into the device manager and get the hardware id for this nic. We’ll need the vend and hardware ID number so we can cross reference it to a linux driver.

Let me follow on by saying the picture tells us the complete story, so well done.

Edit [warning tea leaf reading here] based on enp0s31f6 as the linux device name, I’m going to guess you have an intel I219 style network adapter. When you run the file command it will return something less than version 4.12.0 of the FOS Linux kernel. The intel I219 network adapter wasn’t added to the linux kernel until 4.12.0. Lets see how close I can get.

[jps]

I think, but not sure, it’s version 1.3.3 patch 5929. When i do “file bzImage” it displays “bzImage: x86 boot sector”. The network card is Realtek, VID_17EF&PID_A387&REV_3103 named “ThinkPad USB-C Dock Gen2 Ethernet”

[Sebastian Roth]

@jps The Lenovo L390 yoga is a fairly recent device so why not update your FOG version as well - it’s years old.

[jps]

Nevertheless is it possible to update the kernel ? Thanks

[george1421]

@jps The short answer is yes you can update the kernel. So that’s fog version 1.3.3?

As for the file bzImage command the numbers are more to the right than what you posted. I would expect something like this.

> file bzImage
bzImage: Linux kernel x86 boot executable bzImage, version 4.19.64 (jenkins-agent@Tollana) #1 SMP Mon Aug 5 11:08:49 CDT 2, RO-rootFS, swap_dev 0x8, Normal VGA

In this case bzImage is version 4.19.64. If you are using fog 1.3.3 then you surely want to update to at least 4.12.3 https://fogproject.org/kernels/Kernel.TomElliott.4.12.3.64 save as bzImage and https://fogproject.org/kernels/Kernel.TomElliott.4.12.3.32 save as bzImage32. But as Sebastian said you really should update, but in the end that is your choice.

[JJ Fullmer]

I am also having issue with a similar device. I have the L390 yoga and the lenovo usb-c ethernet adapter that lenovo says is supported for pxe boot. I have the latest version of fog and get into bzimage but I was not able to complete imaging. I think it is in part because it first tries the “internal” ethernet adapter and then the pxe device. There is a ethernet port but it requires a special adapter, and that special adapter differs between the L390 and the X390 lenovo thinkpad models, but both of those (we have some of both) can use the usb-c ethernet adapter, so we went with the universal choice.

I also could not register the device in the fog pxe boot. Everytime I put in a hostname it just asked for it again. I just registered it in the gui with the usb-c adapter’s mac and queued it to upload.

I keep getting stuck at one of 2 different spots during the imaging process, either

Restoring Partition Tables (GPT) ..............DONE
_

Then it just sits with a flashing cursor,
or it get through imaging the first partition and sits flashing.

I did just update to the newest version of the bios and am getting the same behavior.

I have also tried doing a debug image session, but then it gives an error of something along the lines of ‘check your network connections’ and the task gets cleared.
I think that maybe something is getting hung up on the device having 2 ethernet adapters in a weird way, what’s fun is you can’t disable the internal one when using the usb-c one, just have to wait for the first one to fail during pxe boot and fog’s processes

There is a bios option to do mac-address passthru. I’m going to try setting it to use the internal mac for the usb-c adapter (adding the internal mac to the fog host first of course) and see if it makes a difference. When I did this and tried to then boot to fog to register, it didn’t get passed the pxe boot.

Also, I am using the uefi pxe booting and @jps appears to be using the legacy version of pxe boot. Just to note another difference in situations.

I was able to image a lenovo x390 yoga, but I used my old hackish method of booting to a usb with refind, going to the efi shell, loading the efi driver of a usb 2.0 ethernet adapter and then loading the ipxe.efi from the usb and that worked, but I didn’t have the usb-c adapter at the time. I haven’t tried doing that on the L390 because well I want the “supported” adapter we bought to work as intended for some weird reason.

[JJ Fullmer]

Doing the mac passthru still fails to do pxe boot. It tries a net0 adapter twice, each one failing and then gives a pxe dhcp error and then restarts.
Going to try the newest kernel, downloaded it as bzImage2 and will just use it on this device

[george1421]

@JJ-Fullmer You really should start your own thread since the conditions are a bit different. Having a screen shot of the error would be helpful. Also remember there is iPXE (ipxe.efi) as well as FOS Linux (bzImage) in the mix. Knowing which one is having the error is helpful.

[JJ Fullmer]

I was figuring that although the situation is a bit different the solution will probably be close to the same since it’s the same computer model and same ethernet adapter chipset. I believe @jps’s problem and my problem get down to FOS. I got pxe errors in trying different network configurations figured that it was network related

For me I don’t actually get an error message it just hangs like above. This is with the newest kernel available in the kernelupdate fog configuration screen, 5.1.16

I can go throw this in a new thread if you think that’s better.

[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!