Gigabit USB / Ethernet adapter driver

Index

1. Linux kernel between 4.15 and 5.x
2. Linux kernel prior to 4.15

Utiliser un adaptateur USB / Ethernet gigabit sans bloquer le système.

Since 5 years I use a laptop with no Ethernet port. On some rare occasions I needed one and used 3 different USB / Ethernet adapters. Each of them ended up blocking my Linux kernel after a few hours of usage. The last I’ve tested was based on the RTL8153 chip.

1. Linux kernel between 4.15 and 5.x

As of writing this update (2021-06-14) Linux kernel 5.12 RealTek 8153 chip driver is not supporting USB auto-suspend, so this powersaving setting have to be disabled.

There is also a known bug in the Linux kernel since 2018-08-30 that causes close symptoms with RealTek RTL8153 adapters (embeding a USB hub, as for my experience) : Bug 200977 - Daily crash with r8152 driver requiring reboot ; no kernel fix yet (2020-11-15).

If you encounter this kind of log before a series of kernel Call Traces :

Jun 14 13:39:10 machine kernel: usb 2-3.1: reset SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB device number 17 using xhci_hcd
Jun 14 13:42:01 machine kernel: Call Trace:
Jun 14 13:42:01 machine kernel:  __schedule+0x2ff/0x8b0
 […]

You might want to try one of these solutions.

1.1. `/sys/bus/usb/devices/` […] `/power/control`

This can be achieve by writing on in /sys/bus/usb/devices/2-3/power/control, as your device is the 3rd of the 2nd bus.

# echo on | tee /sys/bus/usb/devices/2-3/power/control (1)

1	This line can be added to `/etc/rc.local` to have it executed at startup.

1.2. Blacklisting the device via the `tlp`

Blacklisting the device via the tlp powersaving manager should work also, but have been reported as not fixing the issue on Arch Linux based distributions.

To try it anyway :

$ lsubs
 Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0bda:8153 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8153 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
 […]
# vi /etc/tlp.conf
 […]
 USB_BLACKLIST="0bda:8153"
 […]
# cat /sys/bus/usb/devices/2-3/power/control
on

1.3. kernel boot command method

Another solution is to add usbcore.quirks=0bda:8153:k to the kernel boot command line.

2. Linux kernel prior to 4.15

Older Linux kernels might not have loaded the right driver : https://www.pcsuggest.com/install-rtl8153-driver-linux/

It’s well supported by the Linux kernel, but the default r8152 module is rarely used, the generic cdc_ether driver is loaded instead.

— https://www.pcsuggest.com/install-rtl8153-driver-linux/[Arnab Satapathi]

So a radical solution is to blacklist the faulty kernel module to let the r8152 being used. This can be achieved with a configuration file in /etc/modprobe.d :

# vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist_cdc_ether.conf
# depmod -a

blacklist cdc_ether

Another solution is to point out which module to use for your particular peripheral, via udev :

# vi /etc/udev/rules.d/50-usb-realtek-net.rules

ATTR{idVendor}=="0bda", ATTR{idProduct}=="8153", ATTR{bConfigurationValue}!="1", ATTR{bConfigurationValue}="1"

The idVendor and idProduct field values where given by lsusb :

$ lsusb

Bus 002 Device 014: ID 0bda:8153 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8153 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
 …

The complete 50-usb-realtek-net.rules file can found here : https://github.com/bb-qq/r8152/blob/master/50-usb-realtek-net.rules

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