Helios64 network activity light no longer flashes (always off).

I have one ethernet cable attached to eth0 and enabled.

Otherwise eth0 is working fine

Helios64 is rebooted each 24 hours.  

 

If I echo "1" to /sys/class/leds/helios64:blue:net/brightness then LED lights up OK.    

 

Contents of /sys/class/leds/helios64:blue:net/trigger 

[none] usb-gadget usb-host kbd-scrolllock kbd-numlock kbd-capslock kbd-kanalock kbd-shiftlock kbd-altgrlock kbd-ctrllock kbd-altlock kbd-shiftllock kbd-shiftrlock kbd-ctrlllock kbd-ctrlrlock usbport disk-activity disk-read disk-write ide-disk mtd nand-disk heartbeat cpu cpu0 cpu1 cpu2 cpu3 cpu4 cpu5 activity default-on panic mmc1 mmc2 netdev stmmac-0:00:link stmmac-0:00:1Gbps stmmac-0:00:100Mbps stmmac-0:00:10Mbps rc-feedback tcpm-source-psy-4-0022-online gpio-charger-online rfkill-any rfkill-none phy0rx phy0tx phy0assoc phy0radio rfkill0

 

System level

Linux Helios64 5.10.63-rockchip64 #21.08.2 SMP PREEMPT Wed Sep 8 10:57:23 UTC 2021 aarch64 GNU/Linux

PRETTY_NAME="Armbian 21.08.2 Buster"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="10"
VERSION="10 (buster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=buster
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

 

Hi,

Are you talking about the LAN activity LED at the front of the box (as the top picture)?

Or the LED at the rear of the box - as part of the ethernet port (bottom picture)?

Groetjes,

 

 

 

Hi

I'm talking about the BLUE "LAN Activity LED" on the front panel.

On release of the first batch of Helios64 this "LAN Activity LED" was always inactive as it wasn't yet supported by the software.

At some point during development (I can't remember when) there was an update which enabled support and it worked fine

until recently.

 

Kind regards ... Nick

Hi @NickS,

Can you try to do the following:

echo 'netdev' | sudo tee '/sys/class/leds/helios64:blue:net/trigger'

...and show the result?

Groetjes,

Hi Groetjes, thanks for the interest.

Here's the info you asked for...

root@Helios64:~# echo 'netdev' | sudo tee '/sys/class/leds/helios64:blue:net/trigger'
netdev
root@Helios64:~#

 

Regards ... Nick
 

Hi @NickS,

Sorry, I wanted to ask what the LED behavior is after that command.

Groetjes,

Hello again Groetjes.

 

There is no difference after the echo command - the LED remains off.

I rebooted - just in case - still no difference.

 

Regards ... Nick

Hi Nick,

That's interesting. After some trial and error on my box, I also could not get it to work on kernel version 5.9.13 (21.02.0-trunk.16).

 

What happens if you put the "activity" in the trigger file? If I do that on my box, it does seem to light up almost in the same cadence as the activity LED on the ethernet connector.

echo 'activity' | sudo tee '/sys/class/leds/helios64:blue:net/trigger'

Note that this is not 'activity' of the network, but activity in the form of CPU activity. Not exactly what you are looking for, but this does seem to generate at least some action on the LED.

Groetjes,

Hi,

 

Same for me (Network LED not work).

But is not running too

Anyone have boot issue with last update ?

 

Best Regards

Hello again Groetjes, thanks for your reply.

Yes  "echo 'activity' | sudo tee '/sys/class/leds/helios64:blue:net/trigger'" has an effect. The LED is now flashing blue on and off.

 

I presume "activity" is the module designed for the "System Activity LED"  and that "netdev" was supposed to do a similar

job for the the "LAN Activity LED" - but no longer does. 

 

Regards ... Nick

Hello liberodark, I'm not sure you have the same problem as me - although it is possible the two problems are related. My system boots fine and 

my eth0 adaptor and network are all running OK - for me its just the activity indicator on the front panel that no longer works. It sounds like

your network is not working at all ... Nick

Hi! I just noticed this post. I confim My Helios64 front panel "LAN" led doesn't get lit as well with Armbian 21.08.2 Bullseye. Testing the LED it works as described above.

Hi everyone! Just to let you all know that I have updated today my Helios64 to Armbian 21.08.3 Bullseye and the "LAN" front panel led now works again. :-) Great!

Hi jotapesse, yes same for me ... but on closer inspection ... the flashing of the LAN activity light no longer seems

to be tied to real network activity!

 

1/ It flashes a lot less than it used to do.

2/ If I download a large movie file from the Helios64 to my PC I occasionally see a brief flash, but not the sustained activity that

I'd expect from a download that takes several minutes.

3/ Inspecting my network router, I can see constant low level activity on the Helios64 ip address (I only have one ethernet cable attached to the Helios64)

but don't see any flashing LED.

 

So in conclusion ... its still not working properly!  

Yes, you are right. Didn't notice that. I also see an odd flash here and there but doesn't seem to be related to the network activity at all.

You can check the trigger settings on the led.

 

Something along 'cat /sys/class/leds/helios64:blue:net/trigger' 

 

On 10/16/2021 at 8:55 AM, Heisath said:

You can check the trigger settings on the led.

 

Something along 'cat /sys/class/leds/helios64:blue:net/trigger' 

 

They are the same as before as far as I know, "netdev" is selected:

 

$ cat /sys/class/leds/helios64\:blue\:net/trigger 
none usb-gadget usb-host kbd-scrolllock kbd-numlock kbd-capslock kbd-kanalock kbd-shiftlock kbd-altgrlock kbd-ctrllock kbd-altlock kbd-shiftllock kbd-shiftrlock kbd-ctrlllock kbd-ctrlrlock usbport disk-activity disk-read disk-write ide-disk mtd nand-disk heartbeat cpu cpu0 cpu1 cpu2 cpu3 cpu4 cpu5 activity default-on panic mmc1 mmc2 rc-feedback [netdev] tcpm-source-psy-4-0022-online gpio-charger-online rfkill-any rfkill-none stmmac-0:00:link stmmac-0:00:1Gbps stmmac-0:00:100Mbps stmmac-0:00:10Mbps

 

I was facing the same issue on armbian 24.11., kernel 6.6.62. If you look at the service:

cat /etc/systemd/system/helios64-heartbeat-led.service

 

Below, see that the device_name to trigger the led activity is "eth0".

[Unit]
Description=Enable heartbeat & network activity led on Helios64
After=getty.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=bash -c 'echo heartbeat | tee /sys/class/leds/helios64\\:\\:status/trigger'
ExecStart=bash -c 'echo netdev | tee /sys/class/leds/helios64\\:blue\\:net/trigger'
ExecStart=bash -c 'echo eth0 | tee /sys/class/leds/helios64\\:blue\\:net/device_name'
ExecStart=bash -c 'echo 1 | tee /sys/class/leds/helios64\\:blue\\:net/link'
ExecStart=bash -c 'echo 1 | tee /sys/class/leds/helios64\\:blue\\:net/rx'
ExecStart=bash -c 'echo 1 | tee /sys/class/leds/helios64\\:blue\\:net/tx'

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

 

But, the ethernet interfaces have different names:

ifconfig

 

end0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
  ...
enx646266d00c69: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
  ...

 

I wanted the led to follow the activity of 1GbE interface, which, in this case, is the "end0". So, adjusting the line in the service file

From:

ExecStart=bash -c 'echo eth0 | tee /sys/class/leds/helios64\\:blue\\:net/device_name'

 

To:

ExecStart=bash -c 'echo end0 | tee /sys/class/leds/helios64\\:blue\\:net/device_name'

 

And then restarting the service did the trick.

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart helios64-heartbeat-led
# systemctl enable helios64-heartbeat-led	# the service should be already enabled to start on startup automatically

 

Hope this helps.
 

Hi @Vaclav Rada,

You can also disable the systemd 'predictable naming convention' of interface naming by adding:

net.ifnames=0

to your kernel commandline. This can be done in armbianEnv.txt by adding them to the extraargs variable as follows:

extraargs=net.ifnames=0

 

Would be better to adjust your armbianEnv.txt instead of changing on-disk systemd service unit files, as they will be overwritten whenever an update comes along.

 

I have not seen a situation myself where using the 'new' naming convention for network interfaces would work out better. But perhaps my use cases are not as flashy as other's 🙂

Groetjes,