Hello,

 

First of all, I would like to say thank you for building this great product, it's incredible and I enjoy it. But I've encountered a little bit of problem with how unRAID treats my setup. Long story short:

 

1) My server (humble homelab) suddenly had some hardware unkown incident that made its motherboard ethernet port to only go at 100Mbps (no matter the OS/drivers) - at then end, I gave up and decided to use a gigabit USB-to-Ethernet adapter as a cheap and quick option.

 

2) So, I buy a TP-Link adapter (UE300) which is based on the Realtek RTL8153 chipset. On Windows works fine, at gigabit speeds. And at unRAID at first it appeared to go well, but soon I started to notice how the server crashed after streaming content for 1 hour or so, consistently, or when a bit overloaded - I enabled the logs, and I could see how the server didn't crash randomly, but because the adapter, printing infinite lines like this:

 

Jul 27 02:04:11 [SERVER] kernel: r8152 2-1.3:1.0 eth1: Tx status -71

 

I tried to install the drivers plugin ([Plugin] Realtek R8125 R8126 R8168 and R8152\6\7 drivers - Plugin Support - Unraid) but still I would get the same problem. At the end, I did what @Naidu said at that plugin drivers thread, and disabled NIC Offload, Flow Control, but like him, the speed would drop to 500Mbps (half duplex) - nonetheless, it seemed to work, but at the next day, on average usage, it crashed again.

 

3) So, a bit tired of this, I bought a cheap USB-Ethernet adapter replacement with another chip inside (uGreen adapter that uses ASIX AX88179A chipset). In Windows works at gigabit perfectly, but when used on unRAID, I would get only 200-300Mbps. Running ethtool, I would see how it's like the system doesn't have a driver for it or recognise it (Speed: Unknown | Duplex: Half | Auto-Negotiation: Off) and I can't enable/modify anything (enable Auto-Negotiation or full duplex.

 

Researching a bit, I see someone else said to have problems on unRAID with the same chipset, but with an old version of unRAID it did work, so I just tried it to see if it's true. I download the old unRAID 6.11.5 (I was using all the time 6.12.10) and... IT WORKS! It goes full gigabit and ethtool recognise the device, saying: (Speed: 1000Mbps | Duplex: Full | Auto-Negotiation: On)

 

I try to update from there again from the GUI to 6.12.10 and... again fails and go back to the start (no-driver).

 

I suppose it's because the different versions having different kernels, and maybe the ASIX not being supported by the new kernel?

 

In short: Now IDK what I can do. The motherboard ethernet port is of not use, the Realtek R8153 isn't stable either with kernel or plugins drivers, and the ASIX works fine with an old version (6.11.5) but not with the newests (6.12.10 or even the 7.0-beta2 I tried)

 

Would you have any recommendation? What to do? Any tip? Thanks a lot

Edited July 30, 20241 yr by edwardhawitt
Typos

Does the board have an available PCIe slot? PCIe NICs are much more reliable with Linux.

5 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Does the board have an available PCIe slot? PCIe NICs are much more reliable with Linux.

Hi! Sadly that's not the case, it's a thin Dell Wyse 5070 (not the extended version), so no PCIe module available. It's a pity I couldn't get a better "reusable" option, but it's all I have for the setup for the time being.

 

Thanks!

This may work

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266877350150?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=8v4lslM5QWW&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=KFg1X26QQay&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

6 minutes ago, Veah said:

This may work

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266877350150?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=8v4lslM5QWW&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=KFg1X26QQay&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Thanks a lot for the reference! Sadly, it appears the seller doesn't ship to Europe 😞

I suppose by both your comments that I should just give up on the USB-Ethernet adapters (too complex/low reliability I suppose?) and go to the native "motherboard" ones, or like Intel NICs or something.

 

I think in that case I would just go into the project of getting a new system completely and avoid keeping patching the hardware of the Wyse 5070 - I was eyeing a Melee Quieter4C as fanless small alternative, but it's a significantly amount of money just to toy a bit and have a little NAS at home, so IDK, I will consider it about gettint it in the future maybe. And for the moment, maybe save the Wyse 5070 on a box lol

 

Thanks a lot for your time and help.