Can a PCI NIC be selected over onboard NIC in current version of UnRAID? (SOLVED)

[Auggie]

I know in the past that UnRAID always used the first onboard NIC it came across with no option to select any other onboard or PCI NIC.

 

Has this changed with the current version of UnRAID?

 

I'm in the last steps of transitioning to my new SuperMicro X11SPH-nCTPF build, but since it has a pair of SFP+ 10Gb and I haven't yet upgraded my network to 10Gb, I'm trying to use a PCI 1G-BaseT NIC and haven't been able to get UnRAID to default to it as there is no way to disable the onboard NICs via BIOS or other means.

 

Also, I'm not sure if the IBM Intel Pro/1000 39Y6127/39Y6128 NIC is even being recognized at all if I read the lspci list correctly (I'm a real noob at this command).

 

So, two questions:

 

1)  How do I set up UnRAID to use a specific NIC?  I came across a few threads which mentioned "stub" but those were way too technical and lacked in a "layman's" step-by-step approach that I could follow.

 

2)  What are some UnRAID "friendly" (i.e. plug-n-play) NICs I could select from, if the one I got isn't compatible?

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2018 by Auggie
Solved

[JonathanM]

39 minutes ago, Auggie said:

there is no way to disable the onboard NICs via BIOS or other means.

If this http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/C620/MNL-1949.pdf

is the correct board, page 92 says this

Onboard LAN Device

Use this feature to enable or disable Onboard LAN devices. The options are Disabled and

Enabled.

[thefunc5]

I'll be honest and state I've only used unRAID for about 78 hours so I am not able to answer your question. If no-one responds in a few hours I'll dig into this after work today and try to assist as I also need to know this soon.

 

Regarding the NIC assignment; One thing I have found interesting during my brief trial period of unRAID is that once I set the "Static IP" within the web interface(didnt even think to check which NIC this was setting -_-), I was able to take my thumb drive from an Elitebook 840 G2, to an r710, to an HP 8300 SFF, to a custom built PC, then back to the r710 WITHOUT EVER EXPERIENCING AN IP CHANGE EVEN ONCE.

 

All of the above systems had at least 3 NICs available for unRAID to choose from, and it always selected the NIC that had an active ethernet connection and used the IP I had set via webgui. I know this doesn't answer your question, but it makes me wonder if there is even a "standard" way to declare the primary interface and it's associated configuration, given the results of my experiments this past weekend.

[John_M]

Settings -> Network Settings Then scroll to near the bottom where you'll find Network Rules. Set your preferred interface as eth0 by selecting it's MAC address. The web GUI runs on eth0.

 

I don't see your Intel gigabit NIC in the screen grab but it's only a partial list anyway. I'm not aware of a gigabit NIC by Intel that isn't supported. Certainly the Pro/1000 series is. But then you mention IBM? Maybe there's something about an IBM branded Intel NIC that makes it not be recognised. Post your diagnostics (Tools -> Diagnostics).

 

Stubbing involves tells the Linux kernel to ignore a particular PCI ID in order to reserve it for use by a VM. For more information see Spaceinvader One's Youtube channel. This has nothing to do with your immediate problem.

 

Basically, any Intel gigabit NIC should work well. A cheap Realtek card will get you out of a fix but they are not a good choice because the drivers, being reverse engineered, are of lower quality.

[John_M]

1 hour ago, thefunc5 said:

Regarding the NIC assignment; One thing I have found interesting during my brief trial period of unRAID is that once I set the "Static IP" within the web interface(didnt even think to check which NIC this was setting -_-), I was able to take my thumb drive from an Elitebook 840 G2, to an r710, to an HP 8300 SFF, to a custom built PC, then back to the r710 WITHOUT EVER EXPERIENCING AN IP CHANGE EVEN ONCE.

The default network settings specify a bond (bond0), whose list of members includes all your ethernet ports, even if your server only has a single NIC. It is of type 1 (active backup). The IP address, whether applied statically or received from an DHCP server, is applied to the bond. The result is a fail-safe one. You can plug your network cable into any available port and it will work. You can, of course, change the configuration from this default behaviour - and that's when a lot of people's problems begin. If you get into a mess you can delete these two files in the config folder on the boot flash device

• network.cfg
• network-rules.cfg (this is created when you re-order eth0, eth1, etc.)

and reboot to restore the default settings.

[Auggie]

2 hours ago, jonathanm said:

If this http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/C620/MNL-1949.pdf

is the correct board, page 92 says this

Onboard LAN Device

Use this feature to enable or disable Onboard LAN devices. The options are Disabled and

Enabled.

Well, I was able to "disable" via BIOS, but I still can't seem to get UnRAID to recognize the PCI NIC now there doesn't appear to be any Ethernet NIC's available on UnRAID.

 

2 hours ago, John_M said:

Settings -> Network Settings Then scroll to near the bottom where you'll find Network Rules. Set your preferred interface as eth0 by selecting it's MAC address. The web GUI runs on eth0.

The problem is that since I can't get a network-assigned IP address, I can't access UnRAID's web GUI from anywhere on the network.

 

2 hours ago, John_M said:

I don't see your Intel gigabit NIC in the screen grab but it's only a partial list anyway. I'm not aware of a gigabit NIC by Intel that isn't supported. Certainly the Pro/1000 series is. But then you mention IBM? Maybe there's something about an IBM branded Intel NIC that makes it not be recognised. Post your diagnostics (Tools -> Diagnostics).

I can't figure out how to pause the scrolling in the small window of the SuperMicro mobo's iKVM/HTML5 screen so there's no way I can see what was scrolled out of view.  I tried the Java-based console redirection but continually get errors getting the screen working.

 

But regardless, I don't think being IBM-branded should be problematic; it's still an Intel-chipped dual-RJ45 Pro/1000 NIC.

 

 

So at this time, I'm dead in the water as I just can't access unRAID's GUI nor can I effectively use the "console" as I can't pause the scrolling of pertinent information before it disappears.

[JonathanM]

Log in to the KVM console, type diagnostics at the prompt, wait for it to complete, shutdown, pull USB stick, retrieve diagnostics zip file and attach here.

[Auggie]

1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

Log in to the KVM console, type diagnostics at the prompt, wait for it to complete, shutdown, pull USB stick, retrieve diagnostics zip file and attach here.

Yea, I'll do that once I find the time to bring down the "retiring" machine again (I've been swapping its stick to the new machine for setup and testing).  I'm also going to attach a monitor to the new machine to get better "eyes" on the output.

 

I also have a brand new ASUS XG-C100C that is intended for my other UnRAID NAS and I'll test it in place of the IBM 1G NIC I'm having problems with to see if it get automatically recognized by UnRAID...

[John_M]

2 hours ago, Auggie said:

But regardless, I don't think being IBM-branded should be problematic; it's still an Intel-chipped dual-RJ45 Pro/1000 NIC.

Agreed. It shouldn't, but it seems it is. Perhaps it's faulty.

[JorgeB]

You can boot using the GUI mode and use it to config your Lan.

[Auggie]

12 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

You can boot using the GUI mode and use it to config your Lan.

OKAY, from this tidbit, I discovered how to enable the web GUI at the console via this "Boot GUI Mode" thread (I manually edited the syslinux.cfg file on another computer) but just in case, I also learned how to automatically pause console text scrolling via the "| less" command in case I needed to use it for screen capture purposes.

 

Now, due to some SNAFU when I was fiddling behind the "retiring" server while it was performing a disk-to-disk file move operation and inadvertently bumped the power cord enough for it to turn off, I downloaded a trial UnRAID and used that to boot my new build and enable the GUI mode while my "old" server is busy checking parity.

 

Right off the bat, the trial UnRAID recognized the PCI NIC and had acquired a network IP address, and all was well according to both the GUI and on the text console via lspci.

 

 

So my next step is to retest my "Pro" UnRAID stick and see if it, too, will now recognize the PCI NIC.  If not, at least I've narrowed it down to something with the configuration of the Pro stick and am prepared for further troubleshooting and tweaking with knowledge of how to enable the Web GUI locally and to control console text scrolling...

 

[Auggie]

I got it all sorted out so this is to provide closure and hopefully help anyone else who expereinces similar networking issues.

 

By default, UnRAID automatically activates and uses the first network interface it comes across, which may not be the physical first one (i.e. eth0, which is the case on my SuperMicro X9 board as UnRAID selected eth1 as the default), regardless of which port is physically connected to the LAN.  All other network interfaces are then automatically set to inactive (shutdown).

 

Since I didn't know the physical port order on the 2-port IBM NIC, I had plugged the ethernet cable to the most convenient one at the time of initial setup, which happened to be port 2 (eth1), which was the port closest to the motherboard PCIe slots.  This caused all the problems I had experienced with no IP assignments and thus no network connectivity other than through the dedicated IPMI port.

 

During my back and forth testing, I had by chance reconnected the ethernet cable to the other port (port 1 or eth0) when I had installed the trial UnRAID stick.  This is why UnRAID network connectivity had become fully functional under that system, which I had initially attributed it to some configuration setting difference between my registered UnRAID stick and the trial; that was not the case here.

 

It's all due to how UnRAID detects, enables, and disables the network ports it discovers.

 

My recommended procedure for handling a new system and/or new NIC with multiple ports is to boot UnRAID into GUI mode (I had never before used the console GUI as all my UnRAID servers are headless) to determine which port had been assigned the default network port, and if it's currently active.  If not, you can either switch the cable to the actively assigned port, or manually enable and assign the port you wish to use on the Network Settings page.

 

[klogg]

On 11/19/2018 at 4:26 PM, John_M said:

Settings -> Network Settings Then scroll to near the bottom where you'll find Network Rules. Set your preferred interface as eth0 by selecting it's MAC address. The web GUI runs on eth0.

 

4 years later, still the answer I needed. This still works in 2022 and let me effectively ignore my onboard NIC that cannot be disabled and pipe everything through a PCIe 10GBE add-on card. Thank you @John_M