Linksys EA8500 issues on recent snapshots

For Developers
1

I've noticed two issues on recent snapshots with the Linksys EA8500.

First, there appears to be a no longer need uci fix up script in target/linux/ipq806x/base-files/etc/uci-defaults/05_fix-compat-version that is setting the compat version back to 2.0, when the main version set in the general /board.d/ is now 2.1 (as it should be since the DSA upgrade) the fix script setting it back to 2.0 breaks sysupgrade on recent snapshots until you manually set the compat_version to 2.1

Second, since the update to pull the MAC addresses from the NVMEM, there appears to be a bug in target/linux/ipq806x/base-files/etc/board.d/02_network that sets the wan and lan interfaces to the same MAC. This breaks all sorts of things until you manually configure one of them to a different MAC address.

From glancing through the source, I assume the EA7500v1 suffers from the same problems, though I don't have one of those here to test.

2

the MAC address problem is also on V23.05.2
I think the v2.1 was due to a kernel size change after the DSA v2.0 but should all now be v2.1
https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=ec32c4ef01055228de9412fc8bf4a3e80929c88d

3

It was set to 2.0 with the kernel size change, and 2.1 with the DSA change. board.json on the device defines it as 2.1, but with a full config reset the version always ends up set to 2.0. That means sysupgrade will complain every time until I manually set it to 2.1, and that it would happily accept an older, and completely wrong, swconfig build without a warning.

It may well be something else causing the issue, but I've done a full reset and re-flash reset several times and it is always the same. If I get the compat_version from the command line, it reports 2.0 until I manually change it. The 05_fix_compat_version script still being there appears to be the problem, as it always sets it to 2.0 regardless of what is set in board.json

1 Like
4

Hi, I should have fixed both problem. It would have been better to create an issue on the repository and tag me so I could notice this better instead of by luck by browsing the forum for the recent topic!

5

are you sure about this?

6

I will endeavor to do that in the future, glad you noticed it here

7

yes as I had to do it on both my ea8500 & ea7500
I did update from V23.05.0 and ipv6 stopped working
I had to manually change the mac address to get it to work again

my dir-825-b2 just have random address for both wan & lan on v23.05.2

8

Finally got a change to test it now that the sysupgrade server is back up and running. The compat version problem is fixed, as expected. However the problem with the wan and lan interfaces being assigned the same MAC address is still present. With a clean reset config, I have to go in to the interfaces section and manually alter the MAC address (of one or the other) to resolve the collision before it will successfully DHCP from my ISP.

I don't see anything that looks like it would have resolved that problem. To my eye it still looks like a problem in the board.d where they are assigned. ipq806x_setup_macs() in "02_network" appears to assign both lan and wan interfaces the same MAC on the ea8500 and the ea7500v1

9

last few versions are the same
maybe there was an auto increment that's been lost

10

I encountered the issues you described here today when I tried to upgrade my EA7500v1 from 23.05.5 (sw swich) to 24.10.0-rc5 (DSA) and report it OpenWrt 24.10.0-rc5 - Fifth release candidate post. FYI.

11

While the compat script problem I mentioned was fixed, as far as I know, the WAN connectivity MAC address issue was never fixed. I had just manually gone into the config and incremented the MAC manually if I ever need to reset the config.