The main Ethernet driver for all Octeon MIPS SoCs has been disabled upstream in Linux 5.5, and will be removed in 5.6. The driver has been in "staging" (i.e. it didn't meet the usual standards for kernel code) ever since it was added in 2009. It recently stopped building, and didn't have a regular maintainer who could fix it. (There is a separate Ethernet driver for the management port, which seems to be still maintained.)
The USB host driver for Octeon CN3xxx and CN5xxx SoCs will also be removed for similar reasons. * DSA: The removal of the Ethernet driver will affect the EdgeRouter Pro used for the Debian mips porterbox and some buildds. These do not seem to have any expansion slots useful for alternate network interfaces, so they will likely need to be replaced before buster EOL. * MIPS porters: Given that these SoCs are designed primarily for networking and we will no longer support the on-board network interfaces, does it make sense to continue building kernel packages for them? Ben. -- Ben Hutchings No political challenge can be met by shopping. - George Monbiot
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