Hey everyone,

I’ve run into a frustrating networking issue and could use some help from the community.

 

My Setup:

Motherboard: ASRock B450M Pro4

CPU: Ryzen 5 1600AF

Unraid Version: 7.0.1

NICs:

Onboard Realtek NIC

Intel 10GbE NIC (using PCIe)

 

The Issue:

Unraid boots and works perfectly when only the onboard NIC is installed. It gets an IP, shows up as eth0, and everything behaves as expected.

However, the moment I shut down, install the 10GbE Intel NIC, and reboot:

Unraid fails to detect eth0 at all

ip addr shows only lo, tun10@, bond0, and br0, all marked as down

On boot, it throws errors like "eth0 does not exist"

The WebUI doesn’t load (since the system has no usable IP)

 

What I've already tried:

Deleting network.cfg from /boot/config/ to force reconfiguration

Using different PCIe slots

Swapping cables and ports

Disabling everything in BIOS that might interfere (though there's no visible “Onboard LAN” toggle on this board)

Reinstalling Unraid cleanly — onboard works again until the Intel NIC is added back

 

My Thoughts:

Could Unraid be prioritizing the faster NIC and leaving the onboard out of the config?

Is there a way to manually bind or prioritize which NIC becomes eth0?

Or is there something I missed in terms of kernel modules or driver assignment?

 

TL;DR, Ultimately, I want to:

Use the onboard NIC for LAN access

Use the 10GbE NIC for a direct point-to-point connection to my PC

If anyone has suggestions on how to fix this or properly assign the NICs in Unraid, I’d really appreciate it. I’ve been wrestling with this for days now.

Thanks in advance!

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

my guess would be that the intel card (which REALLY demands 4 lanes!) is put into a wrong slot.

Many slots on the Mobos may look like being capable to host such a card, but if you look into the manual, you see they only offer fewer lanes.

Also many boards have special restrictions like "if you put a card into slot #3 the bios automatically shuts off SATA 5-8" or something.

So, read you board's manual CAREFULLIEST!

The 10G cards often only work in the 16x slot that is usually occupied by the Graphics card.

 

And, like @trurl already said, attach diagnostic...