Intel j4125 mini pc, no ethernet connection

[mendenlama]

Through an Amazon sales offer, I have recently got a Chuwi mini pc (Chuwi Herobox) with Intel J4125 cpu (aka Gemini Lake). It comes with Windows 10 Home and is upgradable to Win 11. According to Chuwi it is "compatible with Linux" (Chuwi Store). Not wanting to use Win 10/11, I have tried so far:

FreeBSD 13.0-Release (bootonly image): Ethernet is not detected
FreeBSD 13.1-RC2 (bootonly image): Ethernet is not detected
OpenBSD 7.1 prerelease snapshot: Ethernet is not detected, sound not tested
Linux Mint 20.3 (Linux Kernel 5.4.x): Ethernet is not detected, wifi and bloetooth, however, are. No sound over headphone jack
Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 (Linux Kernel 5.10.x): Ethernet is not detected, but wifi and bluetooth. No sound over headphone jack
Ubuntu 22.04 Server beta (Linux kernel 5.15.x): Ethernet is detected, wifi not tested. Sound over headphone jack not tested
Arch Linux (Linux Kernel 5.17.x): Ethernet is detected, wifi not tested. No sound over headphone jack
Fedora 36 beta (Linux Kernel 5.17.x): Ethernet is detected, wifi is detected, bluetooth not tested. No sound over headphone jack

Sound over hdmi may work, but my monitor has no built-in speakers so I cannot test this right now. Any idea how to get FreeBSD + Ethernet running on this?

So far: I would not recommend it for FreeBSD, and for Linux only when running higher kernels 5.15 or above with the above mentioned sound restrictions.

 

[tingo]

You should identify the network chipset on that machine, it will help to determine if a non-working ethernet has a trivial fix, or if it is totally unsupported. The pciconf(8) command can help you with that. Here is an example from one of my machines:

root@kg-quiet# pciconf -lv | grep -B 3 network
re0@pci0:3:0:0:    class=0x020000 card=0x85051043 chip=0x816810ec rev=0x09 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
    device     = 'RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller'
    class      = network

As you can see, this machine has a supported network chipset.

 

[mendenlama]

It turns out to be an Intel I225-V network adapter.

I have found this thread: Thread adding-igc-driver-to-13-0-release-for-intel-i225-v-network-adapter.83070 and followed the procedure.

I installed 13.1-RC3 via usb pen drive from the memstick image. Added "src" during install. After install I went to /usr/src/sys/modules/igc and compiled the module without any warnings or error messages, edited /boot/loader.conf as well as /etc/rc.conf and booted again.

But it ended up with this error message during boot (taken from dmesg). With kldload and kldstat I can ascertain that the module is loaded.

igc0: Setup of Shared code failed, error -2
igc0: IFDI_ATTACH_PRE failed 6
device_attach: igc0 attach returned 6

 

[mendenlama]

Now I tested 14.0-Current to boot on this machine and I can confirm it does support the I225-V intel chipset out of the box. With bsdinstall it showed up and I could connect with dhcp to the router. However, it does not simply work with 13.1-RC3.

 

[richardtoohey2]

There are a lot of these units coming out, and I've seen it mentioned in a few places that the network drivers were "on the way"

e.g.

Fanless Intel J4125 4x i225 Virtualized Firewall Appliance Review

We take a look at the Topton Intel J4125 fanless 4x 2.5GbE unit to see how this small Intel i225 NIC solution works as a virtualized firewall

www.servethehome.com

"As we saw last time, you will want newer versions such as pfSense 2.6.0-RELEASE that support the Intel i225. Intel was not fast to support the i225 on FreeBSD so the Netgate folks did some work to get it into FreeBSD. That is why support lagged a bit since Intel was focused on Windows and Linux drivers."

Thought I'd seen something about the Protectli machine - but can't find it now.

There's also a thread (at least one) right here on the forums e.g. https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/intel-ethernet-controller-i225-v-not-supported-yet.80991/

 

[SirDice]

I installed 13.1-RC3 via usb pen drive from the memstick image. Added "src" during install. After install I went to /usr/src/sys/modules/igc and compiled the module without any warnings or error messages, edited /boot/loader.conf as well as /etc/rc.conf and booted again.

You don't need to do all that, just load igc(4), the module is already built.

 

[mendenlama]

You don't need to do all that, just load igc(4), the module is already built.

Ok. Obviously software is there to make our lives easier

In the meanwhile I could put my hands on a Chinese no-name mini pc that also uses a Gemini Lake processor (Intel Celeron J4125). It does have no brand at all, just "Mini PC" and "Intel Inside" on it. This one has a built-in Realtek ethernet chipset and a Unitek audio chipset. Here all is detected at once without further ado. This is the one I am using right now.

 

[SirDice]

The re(4) driver is included with the standard GENERIC kernel, that's why it works out of the box. The igc(4) is a new driver, it didn't exist in 13.0.

 

[mendenlama]

There are a lot of these units coming out, and I've seen it mentioned in a few places that the network drivers were "on the way"

e.g.

Fanless Intel J4125 4x i225 Virtualized Firewall Appliance Review

We take a look at the Topton Intel J4125 fanless 4x 2.5GbE unit to see how this small Intel i225 NIC solution works as a virtualized firewall

www.servethehome.com

"As we saw last time, you will want newer versions such as pfSense 2.6.0-RELEASE that support the Intel i225. Intel was not fast to support the i225 on FreeBSD so the Netgate folks did some work to get it into FreeBSD. That is why support lagged a bit since Intel was focused on Windows and Linux drivers."

Thought I'd seen something about the Protectli machine - but can't find it now.

There's also a thread (at least one) right here on the forums e.g. https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/intel-ethernet-controller-i225-v-not-supported-yet.80991/

Now I got this one, too: https://www.notebookcheck.net/GK3V-...nch-drive-slot-and-a-VGA-output.514581.0.html with a Realtek network adapter (only difference to the depicted sample: mine does not have a sd card slot, though). This one works flawlessly with FreeBSD out of the box and everything else I tested on it. In comparison to the Chuwi machine it is a bit noisier since it has a fan in it.