PandaBoard Networking with Fedora 13

With Fedora 13 booting on the PandaBoard, the next step is to bring up the network so I can install more useful software with yum.

The default configuration for the usb0 NIC is for DHCP:

[root@fedora-arm ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-usb0
DEVICE=usb0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=no

But DHCP isn't working for me, it just hangs:

[root@fedora-arm ~]# ifup usb0

Determining IP information for usb0...Unknown HZ value! (94) Assume 100.

I think the Unknown HZ value message is unrelated to the DHCP problem.

I'm not sure what's going on with DHCP, so I will just try a static IP address for now. First, I need the MAC address of the interface:

[root@fedora-arm ~]# ifconfig usb0
usb0      Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 4A:0B:B3:2A:3E:67
          ...


With the MAC address, I can create a config file for the NIC:

[root@fedora-arm ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-usb0
DEVICE=usb0
BOOTPROTO=static
ONBOOT=yes
HWADDR=4A:0B:B3:2A:3E:67
TYPE=Ethernet
IPADDR=192.168.1.111
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.1.254

Bring up the interface:

[root@fedora-arm network-scripts]# ifup usb0
[root@fedora-arm network-scripts]# ifconfig usb0
usb0      Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 8A:F4:D3:E9:EB:1A
          inet addr:192.168.1.111 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
          ...

And ping the router:

[root@fedora-arm network-scripts]# ping 192.168.1.254
PING 192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6.80 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=0.794 ms
^C

Networking is up and running!

Finally, as a sanity check, I rebooted to make sure networking still comes up okay.

Wait, what's this?

[root@fedora-arm network-scripts]# reboot
...
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface usb0: Device usb0 has different MAC address than expected
, ignoring.
[FAILED]
...

The MAC address is different? How is that possible?

Fedora release 13 (Goddard)
Kernel 2.6.35-g6d019da-dirty on an armv7l (console)

fedora-arm login: root
Password:
Last login: Sat Jan 1 00:00:17 on console
[root@fedora-arm ~]# ifconfig usb0
usb0      Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr CA:70:56:5B:23:7A
          BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
          ...

Wow, that HWaddr is nothing like the address on the previous boot!

A quick Google search later and I learned the NIC on the PandaBoard does not have a MAC address stored in the EEPROM because it doesn't have an EEPROM!  Thus, it generates a new random MAC address on every boot. Argh.
http://lwn.net/Articles/435894/
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ti-omap4/+bug/673504

The workaround for now is to pass in a MAC address of your choosing on the kernel command line, for example, smsc95xx.macaddr=01:02:03:04:05:06

So, I powered-down the the PandaBoard and moved the SD card over to my regular Linux workstation to create a new boot.scr file.

First, I had to yum install uboot-tools to get the mkimage command. Next, I created a boot.cmd file on the first partition of the SD card:

[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/panda-rootfs
[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/panda-rootfs/boot
[root@localhost ~]# cd /mnt/panda-rootfs/boot
[root@localhost boot]# vi boot.cmd
[root@localhost boot]# cat boot.cmd
fatload mmc 0:1 0x80000000 uImage
setenv bootargs 'ro elevator=noop vram=32M root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 fixrtc console=ttyO2,115200 mem=460M@0x80000000 mem=460M@0xA0000000 smsc95xx.macaddr=CA:BC:15:4D:B4:49'
bootm 0x80000000

And then I converted it into the boot script format with the mkimage command:

[root@localhost boot]# mkimage -A arm -O linux -T script -C none -a 0 -e 0 -n 'Pandaboard boot script' -d boot.cmd boot.scr

Unmount the SD card and move it back to the Pandaboard and boot it.

fedora-arm login: root
Password:
Last login: Fri May 6 11:03:29 from 192.168.1.76
[root@fedora-arm ~]# ifconfig usb0
usb0      Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr CA:BC:15:4D:B4:49
          ...

The MAC address looks good! Let's update the ifcfg-usb0 and set the HWADDR line again.

[root@fedora-arm ~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-usb0
[root@fedora-arm ~]# grep HWADDR /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-usb0
HWADDR=CA:BC:15:4D:B4:49

And one more reboot just-to-be-sure:

...
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface usb0: [ OK ]
...
Fedora release 13 (Goddard)
Kernel 2.6.35-g6d019da-dirty on an armv7l (console)

fedora-arm login: root
Password:
Last login: Fri May 6 11:55:45 on console
[root@fedora-arm ~]# ifconfig usb0
usb0      Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr CA:BC:15:4D:B4:49
          inet addr:192.168.1.111 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
          ...

Yay! It works!


One final note: in addition to the lack of EEPROM to store the MAC address, there also does not seem to be a system clock. Every time I boot, the system date is set to midnight, January 1, 2000. ntpdate and ntpd should help with that. I installed both and set the step-tickers (used by ntpdate) to:

[root@fedora-arm ~]# cat /etc/ntp/step-tickers
# List of servers used for initial synchronization.
0.fedora.pool.ntp.org
1.fedora.pool.ntp.org
2.fedora.pool.ntp.org

Then enable both ntpdate and ntpd with chkconfig:

[root@fedora-arm ~]# chkconfig ntpdate on
[root@fedora-arm ~]# chkconfig ntpd on

And now the date should be correct after a reboot.

[root@fedora-arm ~]# reboot

Broadcast message from root@fedora-arm
(/dev/console) at 12:17 ...
...
Starting sshd: [ OK ]
ntpdate: Synchronizing with time server: [ OK ]
Starting ntpd: [ OK ]

Fedora release 13 (Goddard)
Kernel 2.6.35-g6d019da-dirty on an armv7l (console)

fedora-arm login: root
Password:
Last login: Fri May 6 12:00:31 on console
[root@fedora-arm ~]# date
Fri May 6 12:18:38 CDT 2011

That looks better!