Request for Ethernet tethering Support on X96X4 (S905X4, Amlogic SC2_1Gbit)

[Dracoit]

Hi,

First of all, thank you for your amazing work bringing Debian to Amlogic devices — it’s incredible to see a clean, lightweight Linux distro running on this hardware. 🙏

I’ve been testing your Debian build on an X96X4 (S905X4, SC2) box. Everything works great except for Ethernet stability. Here’s what I’ve observed:

On CoreELEC, Ethernet works fine. After enabling tethering via connman, I can share Wi-Fi → Ethernet without issues.

On Debian (your build), Ethernet either disconnects randomly or doesn’t stay stable. I set up Wi-Fi with wpa_supplicant, installed NetworkManager, and tried sharing via GUI, but the connection doesn't work.

Since CoreELEC proves the hardware can work reliably, I believe this might just be a missing DTB/kernel patch in your build.

👉 Would it be possible to include/support the necessary Ethernet fixes in your images?

Thanks again for all the effort you put into this project — it’s greatly appreciated by the community!

[devmfc]

I own a X96X4 myself and I have never seen any ethernet issues at all? Wifi to ethernet tethering just works.
But of course, there are many versions of this box, so do you have a 100MBit version or really Gigabit? And if it is Gigabit, has it a RTL8211F PHY or something else?
Which patches are missing for your box?

[Dracoit]

thanks, I have a 1000Mbit version, the PHY is Jl2101 for Ethernet and RTL8822 for Wifi.

[hungpr0]

Not sure if I can post in this thread.
Thanks for your work @devmfc

I have X96 X4 with different 1000mbps Ethernet and WIFI

ETH: JL2101B-N040C
WIFI: cdtech 47w3155

ETH is pretty stable with android firmware. Unfortunately, with v6.12.48, ETH is unstable, ping is timeout randomly. Is there a way to add support them?
Thank you

[devmfc]

You explicitly mention version v6.12.48, does that mean it did work with other versions?

You might want to play with some calibration values for your box:
add bootargs1=dwmac-meson8b.mc_val=0x1621 dwmac-meson8b.cali_val=0xa0000 to your boot.config. Try to vary the first digit of the last value between 1 and F.

[hungpr0]

I haven't tried other version. v6.12.48 is the only version I tried.

After adding bootargs1=dwmac-meson8b.mc_val=0x1621 dwmac-meson8b.cali_val=0xa0000 to my boot.config file and reboot, ETH is stable now! Thank you!