r8152 driver not loading

[Hr46ph]

Based off this request:
#581 (comment)

When I plug the USB NIC in the port, I see Talos logging it detects a new device:

 kern:    info: [2025-01-13T15:32:39.74124154Z]: usb 3-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
  SUBSYSTEM=usb
  DEVICE=+usb:3-1

I add machine config:

machine:
  network:
    hostname: cp01
    interfaces:
      - addresses:
          - 10.0.0.16/24
        dhcp: false
        interface: eth1

I reboot the node, but nowhere in dmesg do I see the driver being loaded. I do see the integrated NIC (also Realtek) is loading:

cp01: kern:    info: [2025-01-13T15:27:04.891166788Z]: r8169 0000:08:00.1 eth0: RTL8168fp/RTL8117, 50:81:40:98:c2:a1, XID 54b, IRQ 69

tc get links -n cp01 only shows the eth0. There is no sign of the USB NIC.

Do I need to do anything special for this driver to load?

When I added the usb-modem driver extension it started working, but with the incorrect settings similar to what I saw on Archlinux.

[smira]

Wild guess - but might be https://github.com/siderolabs/extensions/tree/main/firmware/realtek-firmware?

We should probably figure out why it doesn't load without usb-modem

[Hr46ph]

Thanks Frezbo, yes I tried that, it doesn't work. I suspect because the usb driver and the r8152 driver are not in the same extension.

[frezbo]

it should since r8152 is already in base talos, just needs to be loaded, make sure usb-modem extension is also there

[Hr46ph]

Yeah, you're probably right its what smira said as well. Its not that I don't believe you, I can only tell you what I observe and that is that I can't get the driver to load for this particular device. When I do the same on Archlinux (same kernel version) I see the different usb modules being loaded when I plug in the device. First time I had to modprobe r8152 and it worked right away, as expected. On Talos it just doesn't want to load r8152 with the device plugged in. I rebooted, I put r8152 in machineconfig. I can tell the driver is not loading for this hardware device, because without the proper driver, the link speed is reported as 705Mbit half duplex. I saw the same on Arch linux. After loading the driver, it reported 5Gbps. On Talos it always reports 705Mbit which indicates its not loading the driver.

Its a shame because I bought these specifically for the Talos cluster (6 nodes) 😞 .

[frezbo]

check it's loading the right driver, you can do talosctl read /proc/modules and talosctl logs controller-runtime | grep -i module

[Hr46ph]

Yes, its loading the module, even before the usb drivers are loaded, as its specified in machineconfig to load. Smira said it shouldnt be necessary as it should dynamically (I agree thats how its supposed to work). When I have the extension usb-modem active and I plug in the device, it only mentions loading the usb kernel modules, it doesn't (re)load or mention the r8152 module at that point. talosctl read /proc/modules will show the module loaded, but thats because it was forced to load via machineconfig. It should load dynamically when usb-modem drivers become active, which is when the device becomes known to the OS and kernel. For some reason this isn't working.