Ugreen USB3-Hub + GbE Adapter.

A while back, I noticed that Armbian was compatible with this Ugreen GbE adapter.

As I purchase on eBay rather than Amazon, I found the above one plus this adapter, which has the same AX88179 chipset plus a built-in 3-port USB3-Hub.

So I decided to try it and see if it worked with Armbian and report back here.

(I'm using the EspressoBIN for this and Ubuntu Bionic 4.19.56).

These are my results:

Straight out-of-the-box, I can see it using LSUSB, but it does not plug-and-play-work.

After struggling and attempting to get the network manager to do something about it, I added this line to /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules:

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0e:c6:a3:d0:c6", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="usbnet0"

It now shows up as usbnet0 when I type ...

ip a

networkctl -a

networkctl status usbnet0

... I've successfully been able to set its MAC-Address (just to confirm that I can make a /etc/systemd/network/10-usbnet0.network file:

[Match]
Name=usbnet0

[Network]
#DHCP=ipv4
DHCP=no
Address=10.0.1.5/8
Gateway=10.0.0.1
DNS=208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220,10.0.0.1

[Link]
MACAddress=defa.cebe.ef08

However, If I type ...

ip link | grep -A 1 'usbnet0'

... I get ...

7: usbnet0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether de:fa:ce:be:ef:08 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

Notice "state DOWN"

networkctl -a shows this line:

  7 usbnet0          ether              no-carrier  configuring

(which is a little more than when not having the udev rule)

nmcli device shows this line:

usbnet0  ethernet  unavailable  --         

The command ...

dmesg | egrep 'eth|usbnet0|ax88179|link.*ready'

... shows ...

[    0.000000] psci: probing for conduit method from DT.
[    4.281896] mvneta d0030000.ethernet eth0: Using device tree mac address de:fa:ce:fa:ca:de
[   17.785161] mvneta d0030000.ethernet eth0: configuring for fixed/rgmii-id link mode
[   17.785225] mvneta d0030000.ethernet eth0: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control off
[   17.797420] device eth0 entered promiscuous mode
[   18.480286] ax88179_178a 3-1.1:1.0 eth1: register 'ax88179_178a' at usb-d0058000.usb-1.1, ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet, 00:0e:c6:a3:d0:c6
[   18.480614] usbcore: registered new interface driver ax88179_178a
[   20.583008] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): br0: link is not ready
[   20.889613] ax88179_178a 3-1.1:1.0 usbnet0: renamed from eth1
[   21.366583] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): usbnet0: link is not ready
[   21.369227] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): br0: link becomes ready
[   31.927910] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): usbnet0: link is not ready
[  146.550026] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): docker0: link is not ready

... So as far as I can tell, it does not seem to work right out-of-the-box, and currently, I seem to have used up all my ideas on how it could be brought up.

The USB3-hub seems to be detected. If I insert a USB2 SD/MMC card reader, the device shows up as /dev/sd?, so the USB3 hub seems to work just fine.

The question is whether the USB3 hub might confuse the driver in Armbian, because as I understand it, the adapter without the USB3 hub work out-of-the-box (please confirm).