Adventures in Networking - fixing rc.conf and whatever populates it

[Constantin]

I wonder if anyone has had issues in the past w/their networking due to rc.conf getting repopulated with bad inputs.

You may recall, that I had numerous issues in the past getting failover LAGG to work with my MiniXL. It never worked. More recently, I have run into a different problem, where "ghost" entries in the TrueNAS Core WebUI (13.0) cannot be removed. For example, I decided to try out a different 10GbE card (Intel 520) vs. the Chelsio that came with the MiniXL, yet the cxl0, cxl1 entries in the WebUI associated with the Chelsio continue to persist.

If I try to delete CXL0,CXL1 in the WebUI (before "testing the network change") all is well - they disappear from the UI. But then if I try to apply the change by "testing", it, all network connections on the XL go kaplooie and I get to re-enable my network connections from the CLI. Then the CXL0 and CXL1 re-appear in the UI for good measure.

While I could theoretically eliminate the ghost entries and other likely cruft from rc.conf, it is my understanding that rc.conf is reconstituted by TrueNAS on every boot. Thus, the problem would keep coming back. So, I wonder if anyone else has run into this type of problem and how they fixed it? Is there a way to get at whatever is populating rc.conf from the CLI that would allow the deletion of ghost interfaces?

 

[sretalla]

If you don't get back into the system to save network changes, they are reverted, hence still in the config DB.

If you want to remove those NICs, you need to understand why you aren't getting back into your system when the only change you're making is removing one or both of them.

Perhaps you'd like to share a screenshot of your Network | Interfaces as a starting point for discussion.

 

[Constantin]

Thank you. I realized that I needed to redo all network settings at once instead of piecemeal making changes - otherwise the system might become unreachable by me and then I cannot confirm the desired network setting as being OK followed by the system reverting to its old settings. I have now successfully removed CXL0 and 1 from the system and all seems to be working again. Thank you for your help.