10G ports not working - kernel 7.0 / ethmux / AS21010P status

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4/BPI-R4 Pro(MT7988)
1

Hi everyone,

I bought the BPI-R4 Pro when it first came out and I’ve been trying to get the 10G ports working ever since. Currently running kernel 6.18 with the latest andrewjlamarche/bpi-r4-pro branch. None of these work:

  • 10G RJ45 WAN
  • 10G RJ45 LAN
  • 10G SFP+ LAN

I’ve been going through PR #21083 and various posts trying to understand where things stand. I have a few questions I can’t find clear answers to:

ethmux — needed for switching between SFP/RJ45 on the 10G ports. I believe this landed in kernel 7.0. Is there any backport effort for 6.18, or do we have to wait for OpenWrt to move to 7.0?

AS21010P PHY driver — needed for 10G RJ45. Is this actually in mainline? I’ve seen conflicting information and I’m genuinely not sure about the current status.

MxL86252C switch — PR #23048 helped with the 1.0.70 firmware workaround. Is this considered resolved or are there still open issues?

OpenWrt kernel 7.0 transition — 6.18 migration doesn’t seem complete yet. Any rough timeline for 7.0?

I know this takes time and I appreciate the work being done. I just want to understand realistically whether we’re talking months or closer to end of year.

Thanks

2

For ethmux,the downstream driver cannot be added to mainline,so i added gpio-hog forcing to sfp-slots. As21 mainline driver does not work with with r4pro, in my repo i use downstream driver and firmware

Sfp-lan should work,but have not tested again after switching to upstream mxl driver

3

Could you please share the link to your repository? I would like to build it and give it a try.

However, it seems this device is fundamentally flawed. From what I understand now, we will never be able to use all the ports as they were physically manufactured, and we will never see an official and stable OpenWrt release for it.

I genuinely wonder what Banana Pi was thinking when they decided to design, manufacture, and sell this device to customers in this state.

4

My kernel is no openwrt as i use mainly use debian…this is only linux kernel:

Currently i use overlays instead of the ethmux for easier testing. Upstreaming these parts is not easy and there are only a few people sending patches upstream.

Maybe someone wants to port downstream driver or fix the mainline driver…