Ubiswitch / BloxOsLite - Link control

is it possible to disable an ethernet port on Ubiswitch via commands ?
Running BloxOsLite V0.4 and it seems the commands for link control don’t work.

ubiswitch:~$ port 8 link off
Link toggle for port 8 to off
(i tried port numbers 1-8 for the gigabit ethernet ports)

but it doesn’t do anythink (link stays on)

ubiswitch:~$ I: Expected switch chip found
I: Switch chip probe successful
I: BloxOsLite: v0.4.0+0

ubiswitch:~$ I: Header is empty, no configurations
I: No DB migrations are needed
I: Initializing DSA switch ports
I: Get LAG configuration from database
I: Header is empty, no configurations
I: No LAG configuration in database
I: Get port configuration from database
I: No data found eeprom section
I: No port configuration in database
I: Get VLAN configuration from database
I: Header is empty, no configurations
I: No VLAN configuration in database

I faced this too. I’ve already reported this bug via email.

It seems to me the firmware is only disabling the MAC of the port via port register 0x1 ForcedLink+LinkValue. However, the datasheet states that for disabling a port, it is better to use register 0x4 PortState. There is also PHY register PowerDown that can be set to save power.

It’s not clear to me why a port with a disabled MAC still transmits data, though…

Yep! This was logged in my backlog for BloxOsLite - thanks for the report.

At present port <int> link ... will enable/disable forwarding on the port (i.e. affects the queue controller policy). It doesn’t touch the MAC or PHY settings and admittedly I suspect this has confused everybody because the word link as an arg has a specific connotation… I’ve updated the docs to reflect this better.

I’ll post here when I implement an update relevant to powering down the internal PHYs.

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I don’t even think it does this. I was normally connected to the rest of the network with link off.

Hmm, strange. I would expect to see the PHY link light with forwarding disabled, but there should be no egress from the disabled port (i.e. no ping between ports). I see you’ve reported this in a separate email and I’ve already added this to check on BloxOsLite when I get around to the next release.

any update on this ?
when do you expect to have link control available ?

Good timing. We’re about to release v0.4.3 which will add the following features.

  • Live readout of PHY port status
  • MDIO debug (read and write registers directly) for advanced use or debug
  • Power up / Power down of PHY ports (rather than just turning off the MAC side, this will actually turn off power to the PHY, meaning reduced power consumption for unused ports).
  • SFP port querying
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Great, I’m also looking forward to the release!

I just wonder what’s the versioning scheme. Usually, new features should increase the minor version and patch numbers should only reflect bugfixes and minor stuff…

Yes, thank you, I’m working on this and will release it soon. I know it’s taking a while and you all need these features - I am working flat out to deliver!

Included will be a PHY link status and link control (I’m making the distinction between disabling port forwarding and PHY link very clear). Also included will be generic MDIO read/write for those who want to debug. I will stress that, ideally, customers only use that for testing and trying out features not yet implemented in a CLI command in BloxOsLite. If customers are using it to implement a feature, it would be beneficial to know so I can implement it cleanly for them as a command in future releases. There is much more included as well, including SFP module querying on UbiSwitch.

As to versioning: in all projects I typically go with .. semantic versioning. This release is almost certainly a MAJOR now with amount of changes there are and how I’ve renamed some CLI commands to make them much clearer in what they do - a breaking change. All changes are documented in the release notes that come with every release binary here.

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