New Install, no ethernet on MiniPC, N95, RTL8168h

[ImNotGonnaBeTheOne]

I bought a cheap miniPC to run Unraid, and when I boot into the GUI to activate my key, firefox gives me network errors. Network drivers seem to be loaded, but I don't have an IP from my router (though I set the install to use DHCP). 

 

If I boot into Win11 Pro that comes installed on this miniPC, the ethernet works without problems.

 

A post I found on the proxmox forums that may possibly be related indicates there may be a driver issue introduced, but as an inexperienced linux user I'm unsure if these these situations are related.

 

Diagnostics attached, can anybody suggest a next course of action that might get things working?

unraidnuc-diagnostics-20230903-1907.zip

[JorgeB]

NIC is detected and the driver is loaded, but there's no link:

 

Link detected: no

 

If Windows detects a link it suggest a driver issue, Realtek and Linux drivers have been iffy for many years, see if you can get something with an Intel NIC.

[ImNotGonnaBeTheOne]

I'd love to use this miniPC if I could, but it doesn't have PCI ports.

 

I'll attempt to use a usb-ethernet adapter that advertises linux support.

Thank you for your advice!

[JorgeB]

Look for an RTL8156 based USB NIC and install this plugin:

 

[Mainfrezzer]

You could download the package and place the .plg on the usb to install the driver for the RTL8168H https://github.com/jinlife/unraid-r8125-r8152-driver

Edited September 4, 2023 by Mainfrezzer

[JorgeB]

I see there's also an RTL8168 drive in the plugin, so try that one first.

[ImNotGonnaBeTheOne]

Installing the plugin appears to require internet access (and my problem is I have no internet access). I'm looking through the .plg file to see if I can manually place the necessary files where they need to go.

 

My main machine is windows, and I don't think I can access the necessary folders (/boot/config/plugins/ to place the files where they should go on the windows machine). Creating the folders on the root of the USB Drive seems to be treated as /boot/boot/... on the unraid machine.

 

This process makes me think I'm doing something incorrectly. How should I install a plugin without internet access?

[Mainfrezzer]

 

10 minutes ago, ImNotGonnaBeTheOne said:

My main machine is windows, and I don't think I can access the necessary folders (/boot/config/plugins/ to place the files where they should go on the windows machine). Creating the folders on the root of the USB Drive seems to be treated as /boot/boot/... on the unraid machine.

/config on the usb drive is /boot/config in unraid.

/config/plugins is already correct

Edit: i do see the issue, gimme a second.


 

https://magnon-box.tk/api/public/dl/3_QCBWZP/r8168-driver.zip

Drop the unraid-r8168.plg and the r8168-driver folder in /config/plugins.

Ive downloaded the plugin on my server and copied the folder. The plugin does require internet access to download the files first.

This is for 6.12.4 tho, if you need it for any other Unraid version, let me know

Edited September 4, 2023 by Mainfrezzer

[ImNotGonnaBeTheOne]

I'm using 6.12.4. I'll give this a shot, thank you!

[ImNotGonnaBeTheOne]

That seems to have done the trick. I copied the files from Mainfrezzer's zip, so the new files were in these locations on the USB drive (as seen by windows):

 

D:\config\plugins\unraid-r8168.plg

D:\config\plugins\r8168-driver\plugin_update_helper

D:\config\plugins\r8168-driver\r8168-driver.png

D:\config\plugins\r8168-driver\packages\6.1.49\r8168-20230714-6.1.49-Unraid-1.txz

D:\config\plugins\r8168-driver\packages\6.1.49\r8168-20230714-6.1.49-Unraid-1.txz.md5

 

Now the plugin shows up in my 'installed plugins' list in the unraid gui.

 

I also verified that change that the plugin makes to /boot/config/modprobe.d/r8169.conf was present, so it seems to have run the plugin on boot.

 

System status now shows eth0's link as UP, but it won't pull an IP from my router. My attempts to set a static IP address in the web tool were unsuccessful. I feel that I'm closer to success, but am back to being unsure how to proceed. Diagnostics attached again.

unraidnuc-diagnostics-20230904-0616.zip

[Mainfrezzer]

I would give it another reboot since i reckon there wasnt the modprobe at the initial bootup. The plugin does state that for upgrade you do need to reboot twice, you kind of done that here by manually installing the plugin.

If that doesnt fix it, i would try a bios update for the pc. But thats from google search for the kernel panic.

If that doesnt fix it at all i would head to the support thread of the plugin.

[ImNotGonnaBeTheOne]

Update for anybody who finds this thread in the future: Further reboots didn't change the behavior. As far as I can tell the vendor for this machine doesn't offer bios updates. I'll either move forward with the USB ethernet plan, or perhaps use a different OS.

 

Thanks again to everyone for the advice.