[Raspbian-devel] Is it possible to track the activity related to a Pi's Ethernet interface?

[John W. Kitz]

Ken,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

On 2018-06-04 18:15, ken wrote:
> On 06/04/2018 05:19 AM, John W. Kitz wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> It appears to be possible to have one of the onboard LEDs or GPIO pins
>> track activity related to a Raspberry Pi's hardware, such its keyboard
>> or microSD interface, another GPIO pin, CPU, Wifi or Bluetooth.
>> 
>> Is it technically feasible to track the activity related to a Pi's
>> Ethernet interface?
>> 
>> If yes, are there any plans to include changes required to make that
>> possible in some future release?
>> 
>> Regards, Jk.
> 
> A lot depends upon what is meant by 'related activity', but there are
> already a lot of different utilities/apps for looking at the ethernet
> interface.

I meant tracking or representing activity related to a Raspberry Pi's 
hardware as is done by the two surface mounted LED's on the PCB that 
default to representing the presence of voltage from the power supply 
and (if I'm not mistaking) microSD card activity, i.e read/write.

While I haven't gotten around to using any of this yet, from what I've 
been able to find to date it is my understanding that it is possible to 
change a Pi's default behavior, depending on the type of board, by 
making changes to /boot/config.txt.

In addition it is my understanding that such changes may include 
tracking, i.e. flash on, wifi or bluetooth activity, but at present, as 
far I was able to determine from the various bits and pieces of 
documentation as well as blog and other posts, doesn't include tracking 
Ethernet activity.

Hence my questions:

o Is it technically feasible to track the activity related to a Pi's 
Ethernet interface?
o If yes, are there any plans to include changes (such as adding a 
parameter for Ethernet) required to make that possible (by making 
changes to /boot/config.txt) in some future release?

Regards, Jk.