Is the standard kernel >= 6.12 sufficient to drive the zero 3e as far as usb and ethernet are concerned?

#1

Hi, I hope this isn’t a FAQ. I recently bought a zero3e and I’m running into problems with vanilla kernel;

Is the standard kernel >= 6.12 sufficient to drive the zero 3e as far as USB and Ethernet are concerned?

Despite my various attempts, I can’t get the Ethernet to work properly (it finds the card but makes an error on the PHY), despite the fact that I think I have support for this PHY in the kernel.
"[ 17.290113] rk_gmac-dwmac fe010000.ethernet eth0: Register MEM_TYPE_PAGE_POOL RxQ-0
[ 17.291926] rk_gmac-dwmac fe010000.ethernet eth0: __stmmac_open: Cannot attach to PHY (error: -19)
"

It’s no better for USB (which sees root hubs well, gives power to devices well, but detects absolutely nothing afterwards).

"root@rock3zeroE ~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
root@rock3zeroE ~#
"

The various distributions I’ve been able to find (armbian, openwrt) work at this level, but they use older kernels heavily patched with overlays. But from what I can see, everything now seems to exist on the latest kernel version, so I was hoping it could work as is.

Most likely, I’ve forgotten some necessary options in the kernel config, but now I can’t see anything obvious, even when studying the .config of openwrt or arbmian (but which are on different versions).

Note that I have to disable the fan53555 driver, otherwise the board crashes on startup. Could this be related?

#2

Radxa Zero 3W/E, being a SoC, requires a OS with dedicated drivers for all the hardware found inside the SoC an on the PCB.
No wonder the various distributions come with a lot of overlays.

I use Joshua Riek’s Ubuntu without any problems.

#3

Hello and thank you for your reply. I have to clarify, the zero3e works perfectly with pre-existing images (armbian, openwrt, debian, ubuntu… - Kudos to all who ported).

I’m looking to port personal code that works with other SBCs (on A20 in armhf and RIsc-V). The eco system is based on Guix, which supports a good number of SBCs, but not yet zero 3E.

My aim is therefore to write support for u-boot and the kernel. u-boot 2025.01 seems functional (with binaries bl31.elf + rk3566_ddr_1056MHz). The rest of the eco-system is already working.

The 6.12 and 6.13 kernels start up, but with the problems mentioned above.

My question was about the current state of development of the kernel and uboot in their “mainline” versions as far as the zero3E is concerned: is it realistic to expect the Ethernet and USB ports to work without using additional overlays or patches, as the changelogs (both on the kernel and uboot sides) seem to indicate that this should be possible.

(nb: the lack of hdmi support is not a problem, as these are servers without displays).

Regards,