Onboard Intel I219-LM PTP synchronization problem ( Driver e1000e 3.8.7 )

[Reha]

Hello,

I have a an Intel  I219-LM on board ethernet adapter on Asus  pro q670m-c-csm motherboard. This is debian Linux, the ethernet driver is e1000e 3.8.7 . It looks that the NIC PTP clock is working.

But when i try to synchronize with the master clock i have the below output from ptp4l service

INITIALIZING to LISTENING on INIT_COMPLETE
port 1: new foreign master 6c13d5.fffe.2a157c-4
selected best master clock 00b0ae.fffe.03e70d
updating UTC offset to 37
port 1: LISTENING to UNCALIBRATED on RS_SLAVE
port 1: minimum delay request interval 2^1
master offset 1131758971068 s0 freq +23999998 path delay -471334013
master offset 1132734602045 s1 freq +23999999 path delay -323203787
master offset 1123360235 s2 freq +23999999 path delay -323203787

port 1: UNCALIBRATED to SLAVE on MASTER_CLOCK_SELECTED
clockcheck: clock jumped forward or running faster than expected!
master offset 2175868319 s0 freq +23999999 path delay -252103953
port 1: SLAVE to UNCALIBRATED on SYNCHRONIZATION_FAULT
clockcheck: clock jumped forward or running faster than expected!
master offset 3299624842 s0 freq +23999999 path delay -252103953
clockcheck: clock jumped forward or running faster than expected!
master offset 4437440631 s0 freq +23999999 path delay -266125793
clockcheck: clock jumped forward or running faster than expected!
master offset 5561166849 s0 freq +23999999 path delay -266125793

And never get synchronize with the master clock.

I had to modify the ptp4.conf and set the timestamping to software then it works. But without hw timestamping .

For the NIC Intel I219-LM and e1000e driver it says that hw timestamping is allowed. But as far as i can see  its not.

Is there a solution for that ?  

[KN_XYZ]

Hello,

I have a very similar problem.

I'm using Dell Precision 7770 with I219-LM, running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

It looks like the NIC PTP clock is running way too fast and the frequency adjustments driven by ptp4l are insufficient. Similarly to Reha I see "freq +23999999" so it is trying to adjust but the master offset keeps increasing.

Checking the NIC PTP clock manually (sudo phc_ctl /dev/ptp0 get) I see that the clock is running about 50% too fast, that is within 2 minutes interval it would advance by 3 minutes.

Reha, have you managed to sort that issue out?

Any suggestions on this?

Thanks

[Reha]

Hello,

Unfortunately I219-LM is not suitable for ptp clock. So we have moved to Intel I210-AT as a separate ptp NIC card.

Intel i210-AT , i210-T1  or i350T series can be used for ptp clocking.

Regards,

[KN_XYZ]

Hi Reha,

Thanks for very quick reply!

What do you mean by "not suitable", do you have any more details on this that you could share please?  I219-LM is listed everywhere as PTP capable and it has hardware timestamping option so I was expecting it to work.

I happen to also have an Intel NUC with built-in I219-V and this one seems to work fine.

[Reha]

I wanted to correct me. 

You can do PTP by software timestamping using i219-LM . i219-LM is not suitable for PTP hardware timestamping. 

[engnfrc]

I too am running into this issue when using the I219-LM. I would really like to get hardware timestamping to work since the machine I'm working on is acting as a grandmaster clock and needs to communicate on multiple NICs. /dev/ptp2 belongs to the I219-LM in question and /dev/ptp0 belongs to an I225-IT, which is working as expected. I don't know if the below output helps at all, but I've never inspected the /dev/ptp files and these bits feel like they could help. I do have another machine that's 5-10 years old (new machine is only a few months old) with an I219-LM, but I don't see this misbehavior there. Both are running Ubuntu 20.04 but the old machine is kernel 5.4.0-42-lowlatency and older packages versus the new machine 5.15.0-72-lowlatency with newer packages, linuxptp appears to be the same on each.

sudo phc_ctl /dev/ptp2 caps
phc_ctl[31649.778]:
capabilities:
23999999 maximum frequency adjustment (ppb)
0 programable alarms
0 external time stamp channels
0 programmable periodic signals
doesn't have pulse per second support

sudo phc_ctl /dev/ptp0 caps
phc_ctl[31652.071]:
capabilities:
62499999 maximum frequency adjustment (ppb)
0 programable alarms
2 external time stamp channels
2 programmable periodic signals
has pulse per second support

sudo phc_ctl /dev/ptp2 freq
phc_ctl[31660.593]: clock frequency offset is -23999998.992920ppb

sudo phc_ctl /dev/ptp0 freq
phc_ctl[31665.443]: clock frequency offset is 9131.210327ppb