New NIC Not Working

[ctowle]

Hi, I purchased a Realtek RTL8111C for my Freenas server, and I am having some issues. I cannot get it to connect to my network. It is lighting up as if it is on, but when I set up the Network Interface from the console it does not work. It repeatedly has an error from mDNSresponder with this error:

I am running this old computer as a Freenas server with 4GB of RAM. I know it is not an ideal set up, but I still think this NIC should be working. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have Freenas 9.2.1 btw.

Thanks!

 

[gpsguy]

Why oh why did you add a Realtec NIC? It's akin to saying you had a bad tire and replaced it with a donut spare, that intend to drive on for the next 4 years. An OEM version of the Intel Pro/1000 is recommended and costs about $30 USD.

That being said, are you able to ping the 192.168.1.32 address from a client pc? If so, based on the messages on the screen, it appears that you forget to configure either a default gateway or DNS (items #4 and #6 on the console setup menu).

btw, if you're running ZFS on FreeNAS, 8Gb of RAM is the minimum you should be using.

 

[ctowle]

Why oh why did you add a Realtec NIC? It's akin to saying you had a bad tire and replaced it with a donut spare, that intend to drive on for the next 4 years. An OEM version of the Intel Pro/1000 is recommended and costs about $30 USD.

That being said, are you able to ping the 192.168.1.32 address from a client pc? If so, based on the messages on the screen, it appears that you forget to configure either a default gateway or DNS (items #4 and #6 on the console setup menu).

btw, if you're running ZFS on FreeNAS, 8Gb of RAM is the minimum you should be using.

Thanks for the response. I did some more reading and saw that the Realtek was frowned upon. I should have read more before. Yeah I understand that 8GB is required for ZFS, but I will be running UFS until I can afford a better setup.

Just tried pinging from my computer and got these results.

Pinging 192.168.1.32 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.21: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.21: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.21: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.21: Destination host unreachable.

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.32:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Is this the NIC you recommend? http://www.microcenter.com/product/360109/PRO-1000_GT_Desktop_Adapter
Thanks

 

[cyberjock]

Honestly, if you are going to go with UFS, you should just look elsewhere right now. There is no upgrade path for you as 9.2.1.9 is the last UFS release. 9.3 has zero support for UFS and there is no "conversion". So you'll be installing 9.2.1.9 and will be stuck with it forever. NAS4Free might be a better operating system for you.

 

[Dave Genton]

By your screen output it appears that your realtec NIC was installed and is working. While its "frowned upon" simply because its a cheap piece of hardware and relies more upon software, drivers, and cpu of computer than a "good" nic. A good nic does all its own processing of packets and protocols in the hardware of the NIC card, cpu processing of network packets is very very limited these days with a decent chipset. That being said, freenas does have a driver for it and it appears it was either given via dhcp or assigned by you the address of .32 on the 192.168.1.0 network. I would use option #9 for the shell and ping FROM the freenas box, like to your router which is likely 192.168.1.1. If other pc's cannot ping it and they are surely on the same subnet/network then you could also have a conflict, multiple devices with the same .32 ip address ?? As stated by someone else to go else where you need to have your gateway and dns servers configured, but first try to ping your router from the freenas, this will cause him to arp out and populate the arp cache of machines on the wire, they sometimes cannot find devices that have not yet spoken, again another side effect of poorly designed/implemented NIC cards and chipsets.