HoRNDIS only works on first boot

[theronic]

The HoRNDIS driver only seems to work on initial boot. When I plug in a Raspberry Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi 3B+, it shows up as a Ethernet gadget that gets an address assigned via DHCP and I can SSH into it. But if I unplug it and plug it back in, the *RNDIS Ethernet gadget remains disconnected.

Running kextstat | grep DIS shows:

 ~  sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/HoRNDIS.kextss                                                                                               
 ~  kextstat | grep DIS                                                                                                                            
  189    0 0xffffff7f83840000 0x6000     0x6000     com.joshuawise.kexts.HoRNDIS (9.2) 10ED3B68-FBFE-326E-B848-DC8082240F4A <22 15 7 5 4 3 1>

I have tried manually unloading and reloading the HoRNDIS driver like so:

sudo kextunload /Library/Extensions/HoRNDIS.kext
sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/HoRNDIS.kext

But this does not seem to help. Is there a way to confirm that OSX is indeed using the correct driver when plugging in an RPi?

[mikhailai]

Hi Petrus,

I cannot reproduce the issue. Given that I don't currently have RPi, I was trying to reproduce it on Pocket Beagle board, and everything works fine.
So, I have a couple of questions, in order to proceed:

1. What MacOS version are you using?
2. Does the RPi gets rebooted when you unplug it and plug it back in?

The question 2 is important: if the RPi stays powered on, it may be the RPi that is refusing to reconnect, not the HoRNDIS.

[theronic]

Hi @mikhailai :) Thanks for getting back to me. I'm running Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.6. Yes, I'm powering the RPi Zero via the USB data port, so it is rebooting. I tried uninstalling HoRNDIS and reinstalling.

When I run system_profiler SPUSBDataType, I get:

      RNDIS/Ethernet Gadget:

         Product ID: 0xa4a2
         Vendor ID: 0x0525  (PLX Technology, Inc.)
         Version: 4.14
         Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
         Manufacturer: Linux 4.14.79+ with 20980000.usb
         Location ID: 0x14200000 / 13
         Current Available (mA): 500
         Current Required (mA): 2
         Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

But when I open Network settings, I see this:

RPi is configured like so:

/boot/cmdline.txt:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=2e6c8d06-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait modules-load=dwc2,g_ether

/boot/config.txt:

# ...all the defaults, plus:
dtoverlay=dwc2

[theronic]

I followed all the instructions in this post with no luck.

[theronic]

I'm not sure HornDIS driver is being used properly. After Mac reboot, kextstat shows no entry for | grep DIS, but RPi is connected as Ethernet gadget and assigned an IP address. If I plug RPi out and back in (which power cycles the RPi), the Ethernet gadget never reconnects.

Explicitly calling sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/HoRNDIS.kextss does not help, so I'm not sure which driver is being used here.

Note: /System/Library/Extensions/HoRNDIS.kext does not exist after running HornDIS package installer and rebooting.

[mikhailai]

Ok, I'll look more into it later today, but can you please try the following now:

• Reboot your Mac
• Plug in (only one) RPi and observe it connecting as expected.
• Disconnect RPi, and then plug it into a DIFFERENT USB port.
• Check if it connects like the first time.

[mikhailai]

In addition to the above, the following steps would help debugging:

• Reboot your Mac
• Run ioreg -l -r -c IOUSBHostDevice and capture it into a file.
• Plug in the RPi, wait for it to connect, run ioreg -l -r -c IOUSBHostDevice again and capture it into a different file.
• Run kextstat | grep RNDIS
• Disconnect the RPi, wait >= 10 seconds, run ioreg -l -r -c IOUSBHostDevice again and capture it into a different file.
• Connect the RPi to the SAME port, wait for it to boot up (about the same time as for the first connection), run ioreg -l -r -c IOUSBHostDevice again and capture it into a different file.
• Run kextstat | grep RNDIS

Attach the resulting files, as well as the results of kextstat