I am trying to enable a 2.5G Ethernet interface on Rpi5 running OpenWRT

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hello All and Happy Holidays!

I'm hoping someone can assist me in enabling a 2.5G Ethernet interface HAT on a RPi 5 (8G ram). The HAT was purchased from Amazon and by sold by GeeekPi.

The HAT name is: GeeekPi M.2 NVMe SSD 2.5G Ethernet Adapter for Raspberry Pi5.

I was watching a YouTube video about a similar installation (but using a different 2.5G Eth HAT) and when it came to downloading the OpenWRT image for the RPi 5, the person said that for the 2.5G interface to work, a custom build was required so that the 2.5G Enternet interfaces drivers could be included in the build image. The two drivers this person mentioned and that I included for the custom build are: r8169-firmware kmod-r8169.

I was successfully able to build and load the OpenWRT image, using the above drivers, on to an NVMe SSD and then get the RPi to boot from it. Everything seemed to be looking good until I looked for the 2.5G (ETH1) interface in Luci; which did not exist in the drop down when trying to cinfigure that interface.

As a side note..... I know that the HAT has been installed correctly since the 2.5G interface is fully functional if I boot to the native RPi 5 OS from a SD card.

Am I missing something? Are these 2 drivers the correct and only additional drivers I need for the custom build to support the 2.5G Ethernet interface? If additional or different drivers are required, where would I find them?

Any assistance will be much appricated. I'm relatively new to the SBC world but learning... :slight_smile:

Thanks Folks and again, Happy Holidays!

2

Does the interface exist on OS level ?

post lspci and lsusb.

3

If that HAT has a RTL8156B or similar chip, r8152 driver in Linux Kernel is required instead of r8169 driver. (kmod-usb-net-rtl8152 package)

1 Like
4

Hello All;

I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season. Happy New Yeart!!!

I was able to get the 2.5G ethernet adpator working using the r8169-firmware and kmod-r8169 drivers. I created a custom build via the OpenWRT download process and added the r8169 details. Once I booted that image, I was able to log into the router (RPi5) and I actually saw both the 1G 'eth0' physical interface as well as the new 2.5G 'eth1' physical interface. I've been playing around with it for the last few days.

However, somewhere along the line, yesterday, I messed up and had to re-flash my SSD a second time. Now when I log into the router, I don't see the 2.5G 'eth1' physical interface anymore.

I think I might have missed something - a step I did the first time but forgot to do the same second time. Of course, like an idiot, I didn't document the process the first time either...lol.

Incidentally, when I boot the RPi5 from an SD card that has the lastest RPi5 OS on it, I do see both the 1G eth0 & 2.5G eth1 physical interfaces.

What am I missing????? Is there anything I can do or check from the console that would give a clue to the problem?

Any assistance will be much appricated. I'm relatively new to the SBC world but learning... :slight_smile: .... apparently I have more to learn....lol

5

Is this the hat you are using? If yes, then you need another driver, as mentioned by @musashino above.

6

Hello All,

Here is an update to the issue I had with getting a 2.5G ethernet interface (GeeekPi M.2 NVMe SSD 2.5G Ethernet Adapter for Raspberry Pi5.HAT) recognised using OpenWRT on a RPi 5.

I have been successful!. I had to use the following additional packages in OpenWRT to get the system to recognise the 2.5G interface. I simply added the following to the custom build option on the OpenWRT download web page....

r8152-firmware kmod-usb-net-rtl8152.

Optionally, you can also add these packages from the software page in OpenWRT if you have an active internet connection to download them directly to the router hardware.

Once that was done, it was clear sailing.

Thanks for the tips folks. I hope I can be as helpful in the future!!! :wink: