Arch Linux

aaarne

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2020-04-18

Posts: 3

Website

Flapping Ethernet Port on ThinkPad USB-C Dock

I have the ThinkPad USB-C Dock connected to my ThinkPad Carbon X1. I'm running a freshly updated Arch.

When I connect Ethernet to the port on the docking station the connection flaps continuously and the connection is not usable.
Connecting Ethernet to the computer directly (via this proprietary adapter) works fine.

I happen to have a Kubuntu 18.04 installed on my machine as well (needed it for ROS some months ago...).
On Kubuntu the ethernet connected to the docking station works fine, so I am sure that it is no hardware issue.
Arch Linux recognizes the interface on the docking station and it is named enp59s0u1u1, while the older Kubuntu calls it enx3ce1a147503d. Is this expected?

Any ideas how to fix the ethernet port of the docking station when running Arch?

Thanks in advance.

Log outputs

dmesg shows this (forever):

[  636.003242] r8152 4-1.1:1.0 enp59s0u1u1: carrier on
[  636.035649] r8152 4-1.1:1.0 enp59s0u1u1: carrier off
[  645.267820] r8152 4-1.1:1.0 enp59s0u1u1: carrier on
[  645.299317] r8152 4-1.1:1.0 enp59s0u1u1: carrier off
[  654.659535] r8152 4-1.1:1.0 enp59s0u1u1: carrier on
...

and the journal of NetworkManager shows this sequence every couple of seconds (I guess it rather shows a symptom than a cause, though...):

Apr 28 23:50:12 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110612.7785] policy: auto-activating connection 'DHCP Ethernet' (78bf46cc-b2a3-4a42-aa9b-6980d9029892)
Apr 28 23:50:12 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110612.7794] device (enp59s0u1u1): Activation: starting connection 'DHCP Ethernet' (78bf46cc-b2a3-4a42-aa9b-6980d9029892)
Apr 28 23:50:12 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110612.7795] device (enp59s0u1u1): state change: disconnected -> prepare (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Apr 28 23:50:12 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110612.7814] device (enp59s0u1u1): state change: prepare -> config (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Apr 28 23:50:12 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110612.7821] device (enp59s0u1u1): state change: config -> ip-config (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Apr 28 23:50:12 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110612.7824] dhcp4 (enp59s0u1u1): activation: beginning transaction (timeout in 45 seconds)
Apr 28 23:50:19 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110619.7858] device (enp59s0u1u1): state change: ip-config -> unavailable (reason 'carrier-changed', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Apr 28 23:50:19 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110619.8052] dhcp4 (enp59s0u1u1): canceled DHCP transaction
Apr 28 23:50:19 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110619.8053] dhcp4 (enp59s0u1u1): state changed unknown -> done
Apr 28 23:50:21 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110621.9563] device (enp59s0u1u1): carrier: link connected
Apr 28 23:50:21 archTop NetworkManager[783]: <info>  [1588110621.9582] device (enp59s0u1u1): state change: unavailable -> disconnected (reason 'carrier-changed', sys-iface-state: 'managed')

aaarne

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2020-04-18

Posts: 3

Website

Re: Flapping Ethernet Port on ThinkPad USB-C Dock

Update: It still doesn't work using the NetworkManager and I get the same behaviour as described above.

However, when I deactivate NetworkManager and manually call dhcpcd the whole setup works! There seems to be a bug in NetworkManager.

I've also tried to use dhclient and dhcpcd as DHCP backend for NetworkManager. Same errors, flapping connection and no usable setup.

youduda

Member

Registered: 2020-12-08

Posts: 1

Re: Flapping Ethernet Port on ThinkPad USB-C Dock

Try to set a different link negotiation setting. Set link negotiation to manual and a low link speed like 100 MB/s. See here.

aaarne

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2020-04-18

Posts: 3

Website

Re: Flapping Ethernet Port on ThinkPad USB-C Dock

Thank you very much for your answer. This really helps a lot and is a nicer solution than I came up with in the meantime.

I "fixed" the issue in the meantime by setting the carrier-wait-timeout for the device by adding this to my NetworkManager.conf:

[device]
carrier-wait-timeout=60000

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 72,008

Re: Flapping Ethernet Port on ThinkPad USB-C Dock

The trigger might be usb autosuspending, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Po … utosuspend (fastest check is "usbcore.autosuspend=-1", nb. that userspace power management tools can and typically will alter this value at runtime)

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