GENERICSD snapshot on a BBB has issues with loading the if_rtwn_usb module

[Dr. Rolf Jansen]

> Am 16.01.2021 um 14:48 schrieb Emmanuel Vadot <manu at bidouilliste.com>:
> 
> On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 18:43:33 +0100
> Emmanuel Vadot <manu at bidouilliste.com <mailto:manu at bidouilliste.com>> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 14:08:58 -0300
>> "Dr. Rolf Jansen" <freebsd-rj at obsigna.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I updated one of my BBB from an older 13-CURRENT (July 2020) to the latest 13-ALPHA1 snapshot from Jan, 14th ? GENERICSD-20210114-7ae27c2d6c4-255938.
>>> 
>>> I had successfully employed an USB-WLAN dongle based on the RTL8188eu chipset. I only added the following into /boot/loader.conf:
>>> 
>>> if_rtwn_usb_load="YES"
>>> 
>>> By that all dependend modules were loaded automatically in a snap. With ALPHA1 this doesn?t work anymore. After hours of troubleshooting, I got it working by adding the following into /etc/rc.conf:
>>> 
>>> kld_list="if_rtwn_usb"
>>> 
>>> The "Loading kernel modules:" takes apprx. 4 seconds, however, then the USB-WLAN device is enumerated correctly and it is ready to use. This makes me think that this uncommon huge delay is the culprit. I checked this with some snapshot thats I had installed already. The issue seems to have been introduced together with the switch to GENERICSD. A GENERICSD 13-CURRENT from end of December showed this issue already, while a BBB-specific snapshot (from November 2020) that I had installed on another BBB works as before by loading the modules in /boot/loader.conf.
>>> 
>>> I don't mind to load the modules by the way of the kld_list directive in /etc/rc.conf. However, the unusual long duration of loading the module and its dependencies might be an indication for a more fundamental issue.
>>> 
>>> Please feel free to ask me for doing more tests. 
>>> 
>>> Best regards
>>> 
>>> Rolf
>> 
>> I can reproduce that on my netbooted BBB.
>> The module is correctly loaded :
>> 
>> Loading
>> kernel... /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x1b4 text=0x68d638 text=0x1c84f0
>> data=0xb4070 data=0x0+0x258000 syms=[0x4+0xa5ab0+0x4+0x119fd4] Loading
>> configured modules... /boot/kernel/if_rtwn_usb.ko text=0xb960
>> text=0x62c0 data=0x2cc+0x3b syms=[0x4+0x3570+0x4+0x293f] /boot/entropy
>> size=0x1000 /etc/hostid
>> size=0x25 Using DTB provided by EFI at
>> 0x87f00000. Kernel entry at
>> 0x96e00200... Kernel args:
>> (null)                                                                                                    
>> ---<<BOOT>>---                                                                                            
>> 
>> But it isn't loaded anymore after booting :
>> root at bbb:~ # kldstat 
>> Id Refs Address        Size Name
>> 1    1 0xc0000000   d23a8c kernel
>> 
>> I don't think it has to do with the switch to GENERICSD, there is (at
>> least shouldn't be) any difference between the old BBB image and the
>> GENERICSD one.

Yes, this might well be a coincidence. I do neither have the last BBB specific snapshot nor the first GENERICSD one for testing these against each other.

> Just did a test on my OrangePi One (Allwinner H3 armv7 with 512MB of
> RAM) and this is the same.
> The problem seems to be module dependancy, loader only loads
> if_rtnw_usb but doing a kldload also brings wlan.ko and rtwn.ko

I can confirm this. And in addition loading the if_rtwn_usb.ko module and its dependcies manually also takes now significantly longer compared to a manual load on the BBB specific 13-CURRENT from November. Perhaps something has been changed in the dependency resolver.