Kwiboo

Use of the RTL8211F phy-id in a compatible will stop it from properly being detected as a RTL8211E, so not a good idea. Mainline Linux will not always handle a reset of the RTL8211F Ethernet PHY, at least on Rockchip boards when reset- properties is defined in the PHY-node, so you will end up with a "Could not get PHY" error unless the RTL8211F PHY has been reset by the bootloader prior to Linux. Newer versions of U-Boot does this correctly, older versions like the U-Boot 2022.07-armbian-2022.07 version as seen in your logs does not even try to reset the Ethernet PHY. Upgrading to a newer (and safer) version of U-Boot should solve your issue (and similar issues when Rockchip and RTL8211F is involved for other boards). Using vanilla mainline U-Boot 2025.01 and vanilla mainline Linux 6.12 on a ROCK Pi E v1.21 does not have any issues to identify the Ethernet PHY: U-Boot 2025.01 (Apr 03 2025 - 06:04:07 +0000) Model: Radxa ROCK Pi E DRAM: 1 GiB (effective 1022 MiB) PMIC: RK805 (on=0x40, off=0x00) Core: 247 devices, 30 uclasses, devicetree: separate MMC: mmc@ff500000: 1, mmc@ff520000: 0 Loading Environment from MMC... Reading from MMC(1)... *** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment In: serial@ff130000 Out: serial@ff130000 Err: serial@ff130000 Model: Radxa ROCK Pi E Net: eth0: ethernet@ff540000 Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0 ~ # ip link set eth0 up [ 27.617316] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: Register MEM_TYPE_PAGE_POOL RxQ-0 [ 27.679150] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: PHY [stmmac-1:00] driver [Rockchip integrated EPHY] (irq=POLL) [ 27.690181] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: No Safety Features support found [ 27.690902] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: PTP not supported by HW [ 27.692259] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: configuring for phy/rmii link mode ~ # ip link set eth1 up [ 32.070210] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: Register MEM_TYPE_PAGE_POOL RxQ-0 [ 32.153078] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: PHY [stmmac-0:01] driver [RTL8211F Gigabit Ethernet] (irq=53) [ 32.165523] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: No Safety Features support found [ 32.166268] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: PTP not supported by HW [ 32.167621] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: configuring for phy/rgmii link mode

@Ian Goodacre mainline kernel should already have support for the onboard gmac Ethernet port? If you had issue with Ethernet using an unmodified kernel device tree, please try again after your U-Boot update. The Ethernet port was working fine in both U-Boot and kernel when I added support for the NanoPi R2S Plus to U-Boot.

Support for NanoPi R2S Plus was added in U-Boot v2025.01. Suggest you update U-Boot from v2022.07 to v2025.01.

There should only be an issue when someone use boot firmware intended for a different board. Please read the patch thread, the patch was partially rejected. If you want to do a custom patch just replace ethernet-phy-ieee802.3-c22 with ethernet-phy-id001c.c916 in Linux device tree.

As I stated in a reply in that patch thread, those changes are not fully necessary. Boot your ROCK 3B with mainline U-Boot built for the ROCK 3B and ethernet on mainline Linux should work. Use ROCK 3A or 3C boot firmware and you will have i.e. ethernet phy issue on mainline Linux.