Dietpi: Erratic Ethernet Performance on NanoPi Fire3 v6.31.2

[cmoski]

Hello,

I am adding 20 new DietPi installs to an existing cluster.

I configured up two of the new nodes, and upon first boot had incredibly high/erratic ping times on the newest image; identical on both devices. Kernel version on the non-working install is 4.14.141-s5p6818 on DietPi v6.31.2.

_As a related note, the other 20 NanoPi Fire 3's in my cluster are all working find on the same switch running Dietipi v6.15 on kernel 4.14.70-s5p6818 and have had nearly 100+ days of uptime with no network dropouts._

Pinging Gateway:

root@DietPi-NewCluster-Test:~# ping 172.16.69.1
PING 172.16.69.1 (172.16.69.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=280 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=544 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=554 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=6118 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=5106 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=4082 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=3058 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=2034 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.69.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=1010 ms

Device:
NanoPi Fire3-LTS (Friendlyelec)

Diet Pi Version:
DietPi v6.31.2 : 16:27 - Sat 07/11/20

uname -a:
Linux DietPi-NewCluster-Test 4.14.141-s5p6818 #7 SMP Mon Sep 2 07:10:36 CEST 2019 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Any assistance or ideas would be welcome! Can't seem to locate the image I used to burn v6.15 either :)

[Joulinar]

Hi,

many thanks for your report. Just for clarification and to avoid a misunderstanding. The version of DietPi is not directly related to the kernel version. DietPi did not and will not create own kernels. The kernel is provided by the underlying Debian base image, always.

[cmoski]

Joulinar,

Thanks for the clarification. Upon further investigation, it appears that Armbian has this as a known issue for the board.

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/13624-nanopi-fire-3-unstable-gigabit-ethernet

What I can say is that it works on Dietpi v6.15 :)

Thanks for any assistance!

[Joulinar]

I'm not sure how we can mitigate this from DietPi side if it's a bug inside Armbian kernel

[cmoski]

@Joulinar Thanks for the confirmation -- any idea where I might be able to find a v6.15 image that works with the built in ethernet or tips on where should start looking to build an older image?

I think this may be a breaking issue that should probably be listed on the install page, so folks don't come across it unexpectedly.

[Joulinar]

not sure if there are legacy images available

[MichaIng]

Did you try to upgrade to latest kernel version? This should be 4.14.180:

apt update
apt full-upgrade

The legacy image is here: https://dietpi.com/downloads/images/legacy/DietPi_NanoPiM3-ARMv7-Stretch.7z
Debian Stretch, Linux 4.4.49, unmaintained kernel, but this should be the image that you run with DietPi v6.15 as the new Armbian-based image was created later, AFAIK.

[MichaIng]

... ahh I just see that it has wrong kernel packages installed, because Armbian switched their package naming back and forth. To upgrade to latest 4.14.180, do the following:

apt update
apt install linux-buster-root-legacy-nanopifire3 linux-u-boot-nanopifire3-legacy linux-dtb-legacy-s5p6818 linux-image-legacy-s5p6818
apt purge linux-buster-root-next-nanopifire3
apt purge linux-u-boot-nanopifire3-next
apt purge linux-dtb-next-s5p6818
apt purge linux-image-next-s5p6818

A bid strange that the new variant is called "legacy" while the old one is called "next". In the past they named the old non-mainline packages without prefix/suffix and when starting with the mainline kernel packages, they named them "next". Now they name any pre-5.X kernel "legacy" (even that it is the most current and maintained one) and the 5.X packages are named "current", which are not available yet for NanoPi Fire3. The "next" packages are not updated anymore.

Means I need to rebuild the image to contain the correct maintained package.

[MichaIng]

New image is up for testing: https://dietpi.com/downloads/images/testing/DietPi_NanoPiFire3-ARMv8-Buster.7z
@cmoski probably you find time to test if it brings any benefit to Ethernet connections.

[cmoski]

@MichaIng First let me say -- thank you so much for your work on DietPi. Really appreciate everything that you folks do for the community.

Testing this image now, I'll load it up on two of the devices and let you know the results.

Thanks again!
cmoski

[cmoski]

Looks like this fixed things for me; at least. Everything seems to be responding normally! Excited to be able to run the latest docker version :-)

[MichaIng]

Very nice to hear and many thanks for testing. Let me know if you run into any issues with this image, so I can evaluate whether to move to stable place quickly.

[StephanStS]

@MichaIng: Could you define a couple of tests resp. measurements we should do? Be open with your wishlist. :-)
Then we could divide these tasks between testers to give feedback.

[MichaIng]

I think it is not an issue anymore with the "legacy" kernel package set, which ships the latest Linux versions. Not sure why I marked it for testing 😉.