xM Rev B - Built-in Ethernet always thinks cable plugged in at boot

On my Beagleboard-xM rev B I’m running Ubuntu 11.10 headless from the Canonical images. When I boot the kernel always reports that there is a cable plugged into the on-board Ethernet port even if there isn’t. The file /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier contains a “1” and the command “ip link show eth0” reports LOWER_UP to indicate that a physical link is detected. If I plug in a cable and then unplug it things begin to work as expected and the system starts correctly tracking and reporting the state of the physical connection.

Is anyone else seeing this? I’m puzzled since I can reproduce this with Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, and the Angstrom demo image that came with the board (xMTEST 20100820). I find it difficult to believe a bug like this could go this long undetected and unfixed and am wondering if there’s something wrong with this particular board.

This bug is causing some unpleasant interactions with the wicd network manager daemon…

I had filed a bug in launchpad on this a while ago, but was told it was just me. Since I couldn’t get anyone else to confirm it, the bug went dormant (I only have one board to test so no way to verify). Please update
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/u-boot-linaro/+bug/838200 with your information and change the kernel part to “Confirmed”.

Tobin Davis

Tobin,

Thanks for the response. Your bug seems to be the opposite of my bug. My board is reporting that a cable is plugged in even when it’s not. Your board doesn’t seem to be recognizing a cable that is plugged in. The two bugs may be related but given the description of 838200 I can’t mark it as “Confirmed” based on the behavior I’m seeing.

I’ve entered a separate bug in launchpad.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/981966