R8152 usb ethernet driver doesnt load firmware file even though it exists

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1

I have build a custom x86 openwrt and use a r8152 usb ethernet device. However when the device is loaded i always get this error:

[94548.914215] usb 2-2: reset SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[94548.957508] r8152 2-2:1.0: unable to load firmware patch rtl_nic/rtl8153a-4.fw (-2)
[94549.004994] r8152 2-2:1.0 eth2: v1.11.11

and I cannot get it to load the firmware.

here is the firmware file:

root@OpenWrt:~# ls -l /lib/firmware/rtl_nic/
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          2076 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8105e-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1856 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8106e-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           832 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8106e-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           992 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8107e-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           976 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8107e-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          3456 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8125a-3.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         10128 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8125b-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          3328 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8125b-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1768 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8153a-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1440 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8153a-3.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           712 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8153a-4.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1088 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8153b-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           816 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8153c-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          3816 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8156a-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          5448 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8156b-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1492 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168d-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1324 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168d-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          5500 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168e-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          3920 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168e-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          3872 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168e-3.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          3424 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168f-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1232 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168f-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           336 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168fp-3.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          4304 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168g-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          4896 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168g-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           832 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168g-3.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           992 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168h-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           976 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8168h-2.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1824 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8402-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          2112 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8411-1.fw
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1040 Sep 14 02:36 rtl8411-2.fw

as you can see, it is clearly in the filesystem at /lib/firmware and that is what i think is the correct location for the firmware. why does the kernel module not load this firmware? the error of -2 typically means the file is not found...

has anyone run into this issue? is there a resolution?

2

assuming the path isn't cut off in the error message, it might be looking in the wrong dir.

3

If your build is based on kernel 5.10 you need to install kmod-crypto-sha256 to properly load the firmware.

4

thank you. i am using 5.10 and i knew someone would know how to fix it. could you also tell me how come this is the case?

5

I was added with this upstream commit https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/9370f2d05a2a150b0aa719a3070b26d478180df3 line 3527

1 Like
6

thanks i get it now. I thought you meant it somehow applied to all firmware loading on the kernel. looks like theres a dependency but it was not brought through from kernel makefiles to the openwrt build w/respect to the additional firmware (incidentally part of the r8169 firmware package)