[BPI-R4 Lite] SFP module not detected on OpenWrt 21.02 / Missing kmod-sfp support

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4 Lite (MT7987A)
1

Hey everyone,

I’ve been trying to get the SFP port working on my Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite running the vendor-provided OpenWrt 21.02-SNAPSHOT (kernel 5.4.281). However, the SFP cage is completely undetected — the system doesn’t log anything when I insert an SFP module, and there’s no /sys/class/net/…/sfp device.

Here’s what I found so far:

root@OpenWrt:~# find /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/ -name “sfp.ko” (no output)

root@OpenWrt:~# dmesg | grep -i sfp (no output)

root@OpenWrt:~# ethtool -m lan5 (no output)

root@OpenWrt:~# ip link show … 8: lan5@eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 …

So it looks like the SFP driver (kmod-sfp) is missing or not built for this kernel. insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/sfp.ko fails because there’s simply no module file. The 2.5G PHY (MediaTek MT7987) is working fine for the RJ45 WAN port, but the SFP cage seems completely inactive.

I also tried switching WAN to lan5, checking /sys/class/net/lan5/carrier, etc. — still no link or detection. This feels like the driver was never built or integrated for this target.

:bulb: What I tried / What’s missing:

kmod-sfp doesn’t exist in the package repo (opkg install kmod-sfp → not found).

Rebuilding from the BPI-R4Lite OpenWrt source on GitHub also failed — missing kernel symbols for phylink and sfp.

Even find /sys -name “sfp” only shows /sys/bus/platform/drivers/sfp (no actual device).

:question: Question

Could someone from @sinovoip or @BPI_Justin please confirm whether:

  1. The SFP slot is actually supported in the vendor OpenWrt 21.02 image?

  2. If not, is there any patch, DTS overlay or newer build (kernel 6.6 / OpenWrt 24.10) that adds proper kmod-sfp and phylink support?

I just need basic SFP detection (even before link negotiation). Right now the cage behaves like it’s not even powered on.

:gear: Environment summary

Model: Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite Architecture: ARMv8 (MT7987) OpenWrt Version: 21.02-SNAPSHOT Kernel Version: 5.4.281

I’ve seen multiple users having the same issue on other boards, but no one seems to have confirmed it on R4 Lite yet. Is there an official OpenWrt 24.10 / kernel 6.6 image that includes SFP support for this model?

Thanks in advance to the team — and please, let’s fix this in an official release. It’s really surprising that such a promising board ships with a totally non-functional SFP slot.