I've given my Apple USB dongle to QA, they're going to try to reproduce this behavior.

I have used this at home with a Apple Airport Extreme  and now here where I really need it at work. This is a huge Lan here with Cisco Equipment. I bought the apple dongle being easy to  get here. Guess I will have to take this home and use it wireless. Really wanted to use here at work though. Hope they figure out whats wrong.

Last edited by Bearman (2009-08-24 09:51:06)

I'm using the Apple USB adaptor that came with my new Mac Air. Everything's working ok over here as far as I can tell. Been using it with my Chumby for about a month.

We're trying to track this down - unfortunately, we've been unable to reproduce it.

These types of things are the toughest types of problems - there can be so many possible causes and they take so long to manifest.

That's really odd.  It sounds like it could be a DHCP problem.  Have you tried setting your chumby up to have a static address?

Just tried it - set it to static IP, wait until it connected, then rebooted Chumby. I checked to make sure the IP was static. It lasted about 3 hours. I rebooted again, at 6:15pm, and it just died at 9:18pm (including time when widgets would load, but with no content as they could not download it).

So a static IP doesn't really help.

I've just changed it back to DHCP, and will check if it gets the same IP - I'm pretty sure it does from memory.

I wonder if the Apple USB Ethernet Adapter itself is faulty; might test it on my laptop after.

EDIT: yep, same IP on restart when using DHCP.

EDIT #2: been using the adapter all day on my laptop - no issues at all.

Last edited by samuel337 (2009-10-11 00:17:30)

Has there been any updates to this? I am still having the problem. This prevents me using my Chumby  at work. Which is why I bought it to begin with.

Thanks
Bearman

Duane, I have 6 Chumbys running in the office LAN (Cisco equipment) using Apple USB-Ethernet Adapters having the EXACT same symptoms as mentioned by others above:
- The network connectivity is lost after about 2 hours to 2 days.
- 1 specific Chumby looses connectivity at a max of 12 hours, where as the others loose it between 24 to 48 hours.
- All Chumbys are running the latest firmware available for Chumby classics.
- The same Chumbys works fine on Wi-Fi in my home network, with the network not having dropped for almost a week now.
- As mentioned by samuel337 above, the same Apple adapters work fine on a Windows PC, leading me to beleive that its not really a hardware issue but more likely an issue with the linux device drivers implemented on the Chumby
- I can also confirm that the same IP is retained after rebooting, and I have tried assigning static IPs too but the problem still remains persistent.
- I am running a stand-alone app on all Chumbys using debugchumby (non-widget mode), which removes the possibility of any issues being caused by the Chumby control-panel software
- Currently the only way to regain network connectivity is to reboot the Chumby!!

In the environment we are planning to roll-out these Chumbys, it is not an option to use Wi-Fi. If we don't find a fix for this soon, the only alternative we might have is to run a script/cron to reboot the Chumby every 2 hours or so, which would create a few complexities with our stand-alone app loosing dynamic info from the volatile memory. As you can imagine this is defintely not a desirable solution.

I fail to imagine why you are not able to reproduce it, as I have consistently managed to loose the network on 6 chumbys for more than 2 weeks now. The only difference at your end would be the LAN setup which in my guess should not be as different. I too am happy to run any suggestions or experimental scripts from you and provide you the test results, if you still haven't been able to reporduce the problem at your end.

My best guess so far is that the driver implementation for the same is not very robust, but that is where I draw the line, as I am not into re-building drivers myself.

Has any one had ANY luck with running either the Apple, or even another known brand USB-ethernet adapters on the Chumby for over 2 days without dropping out the network?

Masterdaddy, thanks for getting back so quickly.

That sounds like a fantastic idea but I have no idea how to implement it on the Chumby (Linux Newbie:) ). I would really really appreciate if you can give me a few further specific commands on the same.

I did try to implement a script which did the following every hour but it hasn't helped resolve the problem:

  echo "`date` :: Restarting Network - STOPPING" >> $NETWORK_LOG
  ifconfig eth0 down
  sleep 5
  echo "`date` :: Restarting Network - STARTING" >> $NETWORK_LOG
  ifconfig eth0 up
  sleep 4
  echo "`date` :: `udhcpc eth0`" >> $NETWORK_LOG
  sleep 3
  route >> $NETWORK_LOG

Any help appreciated and thanks once again.

Slight correction to Materdaddy's post, for the chumby classic you could perform the following:

rmmod <NAME OF APPLE-USB-TO-ETHERNET KERNEL MODULE>
sleep 2
insmod <NAME OF APPLE-USB-TO-ETHERNET KERNEL MODULE>
/usr/chumby/scripts/start_network

Note that reloading the driver will cause the interface number to increment with every reload, eth1, eth2, etc..
start_network script will use the network configuration details from /psp/network_config, containing the last applied settings, whether those were successful or not in connecting your chumby. If you are using static IP settings, you can just copy /psp/network_config to your other chumbys and modify the ip field accordingly.

Your product sounds interesting, I'd be interested to know more information if you can!

As for the ifconfig down before running rmmod, you will probably^ have to run ifconfig down because the module will be listed as "in use" and rmmod will fail to remove it if the ethernet controller is "up".

^NOTE: all of my input on this thread is without actually poking the chumby, sorry for the modprobe/insmod mix-up as well as the "unsure" nature of my posts.  My chumby is at home, and I don't feel like toying with the device if it's not with me, even with my fun (soon to be posted?) chumby hacks.

Last edited by Materdaddy (2009-12-11 08:19:49)

I was wondering if there is any news on this problem. I've been trying to get my Chumby talking reliably on an Ethernet connection for a few days now. Most recently i've been trying an Apple USB Ethernet dongle and it has been flaking out after between a few minutes and a couple of hours. I was previously trying a D-Link DUB E100 (rev B), which is in the list of supported devices but, despite being detected by the kernel, wouldn't talk to the network at all. Can anyone recommend an USB Ethernet device that works reliably on the Chumby?