TP-Link TG-3468 causing system to not boot

[oj88]

You be the judge.

I agree on using Intel NICs, if it can be helped, for devices that predominantly has a network role. They just work.... and usually, very well.

This is not to say that anything other than Intel would be problematic. Rather, it just becomes a YMMV-type of deal.

Per the other thread, a third option is to invest in an appliance.
- well, a bit more than that.

With respect, after matching the interfaces to their intended role, the configuration should stick and should survive a power-cycle/reboot. I think that's a fair expectation. I still don't understand why this is not always so on non-appliances.

[Jim.Alles]

With respect, after matching the interfaces to their intended role, the configuration should stick and should survive a power-cycle/reboot. I think that's a fair expectation. I still don't understand why this is not always so on non-appliances.

Agreed, and we were able to expect that - but it seems you will need to argue with the Debian developers on that point.
https://forums.untangle.com/networking/43282-interfaces-getting-remapped-after-reboot-2.html#post243589

[Rumboogy]

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/hik15m/how_good_are_realtek_ethernet_chipsets_on_linux/

https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/intel-or-realtek-nic-linux-compatibility/8033

From reading those two links my takeaway is that Realtek in a Linux environment was more troublesome in the past, but is now usually OK. Although I agree that Intel is clearly a vendor with a much better reputation than Realtek. Currently I am still kicking the tires of Untangle so my el-cheapo setup is OK.

[Rumboogy]

I have not encountered this before, myself or on the forums.
This issue might be worth opening a support ticket on.

So no one has seen this (look a the Speed column)?
Screen Shot 2020-09-12 at 4.54.19 PM.png

[Rumboogy]

NOOB question, how do you "opening a support ticket"? Is it just the green "? Help" button?

[Jim.Alles]

Yes, and then the green [Contact Us] button. Enter the UID (no serial number)

[Rumboogy]

While we are on the subject of NIC's, what is the proper procedure to install a new NIC in an existing Untangle NG system? Do you need to re-install Untangle NG to get it to recognize the new hardware and configure it properly (what I have been doing) or is there some better way?

[sky-knight]

In theory, you simply power down, install the NICs and boot up. The new interfaces should appear in the GUI automatically.

In practice Debian isn't always that forgiving, and things come up out of order, or incompletely. The only known way to force the update is to reinstall the platform. A backup can be restored afterward... again in most cases but there are times when configuring all the interfaces nukes the platform again. In these circumstances you're forced to restore without networking, and reconfigure the networking manually.

[Rumboogy]

In theory, you simply power down, install the NICs and boot up. The new interfaces should appear in the GUI automatically.

In practice Debian isn't always that forgiving, and things come up out of order, or incompletely. The only known way to force the update is to reinstall the platform. A backup can be restored afterward... again in most cases but there are times when configuring all the interfaces nukes the platform again. In these circumstances you're forced to restore without networking, and reconfigure the networking manually.

OK, good to know. I guess in general one does not change the NICs after getting it setup so this is probably not an issue that comes up much.

I had bought three inexpensive Realtek based NIC cards from Amazon (call them A, B, and C) to use in my test box. I wanted to see which cards and in what order gave the fastest throughput. My plan was to power down, plug in A and B (for example), power back on, and test that config. This did not work. Each time I powered on with changed NICS in the system the Interfaces windows was in a bad sate (see screenshot above in #14). So I ended up installing A, B and C all together and then fresh installing UNG. Then I just reconfigured the NICs in Interfaces and ran each experiment. This worked fine once I learned the weirdities of swapping NICs around in Interfaces.

As I said my goal was to do a bunch of experiments to find out what combination gave the highest throughput. Some results from this were as expected (the PCI card was slower than the PCIe cards) but other results were strange - if I swapped two PCIe cards between External and Internal I saw some speed changes. But nothing terribly dramatic. Once I had my data, I setup the box with one of the configs that gave the highest throughput and will use this setup as I do more testing on Untangle.