RoboRIO ethernet not working; orange and green LEDs stuck on

[sgt4795]

After working fine all through build season and multiple matches, our RoboRIO suddenly couldn't communicate over its ethernet port at the First-NC UNC Pembroke competition this past weekend.

At the event, several laptops could communicate with the RIO normally over USB, but not at all over ethernet.  After swapping in a loaner RIO, we did some more "bench" testing,

and observed that both the orange and green LEDs in the ethernet jack are staying on whether or not a cable to a switch or direct to a laptop is plugged in.

(The leds come on at powerup or reset, then wink out, then come on and stay on)

We've reimaged this RoboRIO twice, once from safe mode, but no change in behavior.

Anything else to be tried, or call for support?   Our next event is scheduled for the 20th.

thanks,

Steve Tell

Mentor, team 4795

[oscarfonseca]

Hello Steve,

Thanks for reaching out through the NI forums. I would like a better understanding about the roboRIO not communicating through Ethernet.

1. Can you ping the roboRIO?
2. Do you see activity in the network adapter in Windows (not the LEDs) when the roboRIO is connected?
3. Which are the IP settings on the roboRIO port and the computer's network adapter?

More information here. Feel free to reach out by phone to our technical support team for guided assistance.

Regards,

[sgt4795]

Thanks for the reply, Oscar.

TL;DR: I also called NI Support, was advised to try the USB-stick recovery process, and now have an RMA in process.

In answer to your questions, in case it helps anyone else in troubleshooting:

1.  No, I can't ping to or from the RoboRIO using its ethernet jack.   Networking over the USB device port works normally.  If I log in over usb using "ssh admin@172.22.11.2"

and run ifconfig, I see only recieve errors on the ethernet interface:

admin@roboRIO-4795-FRC:~# ifconfig
  eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:80:2F:16:17:FB
  inet addr:169.254.116.60 Bcast:169.254.255.255      Mask:255.255.0.0
  inet6 addr: fe80::280:2fff:fe16:17fb/64 Scope:Link
  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:26 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:26
TX packets:201 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:56464 (55.1 KiB)
Interrupt:54 Base address:0xb000

If I plug an ethernet cable directly from a windows 10 laptop to the RoboRIO, the laptop doesn't recognize that there's a device at the other end of the cable.  If I plug them both into a dumb ethernet switch, the laptop sees a link, and ipconfig says:

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

 Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
 Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . :  fe80::c886:a262:5ecc:4f49%7
 Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.79.73
 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.2

If I then try pinging both ways using those link-local IP addresses, both directions fail:

$ ping 169.254.116.60

Pinging 169.254.116.60 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 169.254.79.73: Destination host unreachable...

Ping statistics for 169.254.116.60:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

from the roborio:

admin@roboRIO-4795-FRC:~# ping 169.254.79.73
PING 169.254.79.73 (169.254.79.73): 56 data bytes
^C
--- 169.254.79.73 ping statistics ---
15 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

2.  No, I never saw any signs of activity over the windows ethernet network adaptor.

3. network settings are shown in the output above.

I called NI support, and after recieving a package with the  recovery image and trying several USB sticks, we have an RMA in process.

Thanks for your help,

Steve

[oscarfonseca]

Thanks for the detailed answer, Steve.

From your description I am tempted to think that the problem is related to a background service not working properly anymore. Perhaps some memory corruption or misconfiguration caused during operation? Not sure.

If you already have an ongoing RMA, I am confident the replacement will solve the issue; especially if the recovery tool did not affect the behavior you saw.

Thanks,