Can't get 11.0-RELEASE to boot on Banana PI M3 [From back in 2016-Dec]

[Mark Millard]

[Sent in part because of bugzilla 219436's submittal,
 in essence here I repeat my comment 1 to that report.]

On 2016-Dec-11, at 1:47 AM, Mark Millard <markmi at dsl-only.net> wrote:

> . . .
> I've not gotten nearly as far as you have for that issue.
> I've been trying to gather information on why in the new
> context the BPi-M3 shuts down or reboots on its own, no
> matter if Ethernet is connected or not. No console messages
> about why it shuts down. No log file information. No drop
> into ddb, despite how I specified the kernel configuration.
> 
> In the prior environment it had been up for something like
> 22 days, with a mix of idle time and used time. Now it
> rarely stays up for more than 12 hours, even sitting idle.
> 
> ===
> Mark Millard
> markmi at dsl-only.net
> 
> On 2016-Dec-11, at 1:15 AM, Michael Sperber <sperber at deinprogramm.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> So I've got debug output now:
> 
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0: <Allwinner Gigabit Ethernet> mem 0x1c30000-0x1c300ff on simplebus0
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0: soft reset timed out
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   BASIC_CTL_0          00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   BASIC_CTL_1          08000001
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   INT_STA              40000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   INT_EN               00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   TX_CTL_0             00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   TX_CTL_1             00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   TX_FLOW_CTL          00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   TX_DMA_LIST          00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_CTL_0             00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_CTL_1             00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_DMA_LIST          00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_FRM_FLT           00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_HASH_0            00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_HASH_1            00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   MII_CMD              00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   ADDR_HIGH0           0000ffff
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   ADDR_LOW0            ffffffff
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   TX_DMA_STA           0000ffff
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   TX_DMA_CUR_DESC      ffffffff
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   TX_DMA_CUR_BUF       0000ffff
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_DMA_STA           00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_DMA_CUR_DESC      00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RX_DMA_CUR_BUF       00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: awg0:   RGMII_STA            00000000
> Dec 10 22:14:23  kernel: device_attach: awg0 attach returned 60
> 
> (I'd also increased the retry count from 1000 to 5000, which did not
> help.)
> 
> Enough for a PR?

I eventually solved my problem on the BPI-M3. That was now
months ago: I've not had such a problem in months.

Out of all the things that I tried what made the difference
was replacing the power supply that I was using to power the
BPI-M3. After that the BPI-M3 worked and had no more Ethernet
problems, both in the unusual environment that I was in back
then and in my usual environment when I returned. It still
works just fine.

This change was made and tested for a time without making
any other simultaneous changes. I eventually started updating
the BPI-M3 FreeBSD and ports again.

Note: I did not expect the power supply change to make the
difference based on the symptoms and other uses of the
power supply that I'd made. But I tried replacing it 
with a different model power supply anyway. (The
problem might be the individual power supply rather
than a model but I tried a different model.)

I've not done anything to examine the properties of the
output of the bad/odd power supply when powering the
BPI-M3 (or any other use). So I do not know what its
technical issue(s) are that a BPI-M3 might be sensitive
to.

===
Mark Millard
markmi at dsl-only.net