People asking for help and then rejecting advice

[Patrick M. Hausen]

The big thing with the Telebit's ...

Yeah, those Trailblazers. We used to say they could transmit data over wet thread.

Telebit - PEP and The TrailBlazer | PEP TrailBlazer

 

[HoneyBadger]

I think the thread at

Multiple interfaces on same subnet

So I really don't understand this at all. There is absolutely no technical reason for not being able to have multiple interfaces on the same subnet, regardless of they are serving the same service or not. I mean really, there's no reason why I can't have two iSCSI initiators in the same subnet...

www.truenas.com

is a poster child for a variation on the theme of this thread.

What I think is the problem there is that so many vendors (not naming any in particular, they know who they are) not only allowed but encouraged this multiple-interfaces-on-a-subnet design by making their disk arrays compatible with it, or making whitepapers using it as an example.

There's a lot of evolving standards and best practices but I've yet to have a multiple-subnet IP SAN design steer me wrong. (Or FC, but that's another kettle of fish.)

 

[jgreco]

I've yet to have a multiple-subnet IP SAN design steer me wrong.

Stop the presses, this just in, IP works well when used as designed.

<big raspberry> ;-)

 

[HoneyBadger]

Stop the presses, this just in, IP works well when used as designed.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

With the increasing availability of >1Gbps network equipment it makes more sense to just bump up the individual interface speed rather than scale out horizontally by interface count. I'll just go sulk at home though since my 10Gbps connectivity is still limited to point-to-point here.

 

[Constantin]

My office is sort of crazy-town.

I know the feeling.

I'll just go sulk at home though since my 10Gbps connectivity is still limited to point-to-point here.

If only bridge mode could be implemented at the console level, that would make life a lot easier. A misconfiguration per the GUI kills all connections, yet the console mode still only allows individual interfaces to be built up and / or assigned to link aggregation pools. Still no bridge mode setup at the console last time I checked unless you go option 9 and start playing with the ifconfig plumbing directly.

 

[jgreco]

start playing with the ifconfig plumbing directly.

<slightly puzzled> You mean, you don't?

I'm sorta laughing here because my FreeBSD systems run some complicated custom scripting to handle bridging setups for OpenVPN and some other stuff, often a dozen or more bridges on a host, automatically plumbed and deplumbed. My first impression of the quoted bit was "well that's easy" and then the next one was "but you've been doing it for decades, jackarse."

When you write a lot of your own toolsets, you sometimes forget how dependent other people are on those toolsets, not just using them as a helper to make life easier, but actually not knowing what's going on under the hood. Then I remember that I stopped servicing my car years ago and pay a guy to do it instead. Heh.

 

[Constantin]

I’m still puzzled that the console interfaces menu tree does not include bridge configuration setup. If LACP is supported, why not bridge mode?

 

[jgreco]

I’m still puzzled that the console interfaces menu tree does not include bridge configuration setup. If LACP is supported, why not bridge mode?

I don't think bridge mode is used for anything in basic networking, is it? It only becomes involved once there's services such as jails, containers, or VM's.

 

[Constantin]

Ok I must be dense. I thought bridge mode would basically turn the two or more ports into a basic hub (or switch?) to which the NAS is attached by default. Is that thinking incorrect? I’ll go read up on it.

 

[jgreco]

Ok I must be dense. I thought bridge mode would basically turn the two or more ports into a basic hub (or switch?) to which the NAS is attached by default. Is that thinking incorrect? I’ll go read up on it.

Yes, it can and it will, but I do not believe such a configuration is offered in TrueNAS even in the GUI.

We have sometimes discussed it in the old days in 10G ethernet threads where someone really didn't want to buy a pricey datacenter switch and wanted to be able to hook up a PC or two using the FreeNAS box as a "bridge" or "hub/switch/whatever" network device so that there would be a 10G-10G link from PC to NAS, then 1G from NAS onto the rest of the network including upstream Internet. That does work but it isn't highly recommended for what I hope are obvious reasons. Plus it's 2022 and there are cheap 10G options.

I do not recall ever having seen any hint of support from iXsystems for using the NAS platform in this manner. Bridges have, TTBOMK, been exclusively applied as targets for virtual services supplied from the NAS host.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Yes, it can and it will, but I do not believe such a configuration is offered in TrueNAS even in the GUI.

Oh, it is. Create a bridge interface with e.g. all four interfaces of your Supermicro X10 board as members. Move IP address configuration to the bridge interface. Voila. 4 port switch for free. I have been running this for quite some time.

And a bit if nitpicking, @Constantin: there is no bridge mode. There is a bridge interface that turns an arbitrary number of physical (ethernet, wifi) and/or virtual (epair) interfaces into a switch.

 

[Constantin]

Patrick, correction duly noted, thank you. Could you point me towards a resource that teaches me how to set up a permanent bridge interface between all (in my case four) ports?

For example, I’m afraid of these settings getting nuked if I upgrade and restart.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

• go to Network > Interfaces in the UI
• remove IP address from your currently active NIC
• add "up" into the "Options" field of each NIC you want to use and make sure to check "Disable Hardware Offloading" for each
• click on ADD to create a new interface, select type "bridge"
• name it "bridge0"
• check all interfaces you want to use in the "members" selection
• add IP address
• finally go through the regular test --> save workflow

 

[sretalla]

Before @Patrick M. Hausen beat me to it, I was going to put it as below... but he educated me on the "up" option for the NICs and reminded me about turning off hardware offload, so better that he did.

I’m afraid of these settings getting nuked if I upgrade and restart.

If it's in the GUI (which is how you should do it), it's in the DB and hence will survive reboots and upgrades.

Network | Interfaces | Add...

Type: Bridge

Members: your NICs

 

[Volts]

Another observation regarding the original thread topic, related to points already made -

People often ask why what they've done isn't working, instead of describing their goal and asking how to accomplish it.

Home - The XY Problem

xyproblem.info

That leads to an ego hit when they're told that what they've attempted is Not Even Wrong.

 

[jgreco]

Another observation regarding the original thread topic, related to points already made -

People often ask why what they've done isn't working, instead of describing their goal and asking how to accomplish it.

Home - The XY Problem

xyproblem.info

That leads to an ego hit when they're told that what they've attempted is Not Even Wrong.

If we add a bonus multiplier of people not even really describing what they've done to the mix, that's a great point.

 

[danb35]

And from that page, of course, is linked the classic:

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

 

[ChrisRJ]

If we add a bonus multiplier of people not even really describing what they've done to the mix, that's a great point.

Or if people tell the experts that the additional details those wanted to know are not relevant for answering the question.

 

[Constantin]

Thank you @Patrick M. Hausen and @sretalla! I'm trying it out ATM to see how my machine is behaving with bridge mode turned on.

The Network GUI functionality where you can try out a new config for 60s before it reverts back to the previous config will have a negative impact on my cardio since I will no longer need to run up and down in the house to reset network interfaces manually at the console.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Depending on the switch you use it can take a full 30 seconds before it starts forwarding packets on an interface that just went down-up. You can set the test-save timeout to 120 seconds to get some more time before clicking "test".
Oh, and with the bridge active, don't ever plug two cables from TrueNAS into your switch. Sure way to kill your entire network. Nothing unplugging and a reboot won't fix, but unpleasant nonetheless.
FreeBSD's bridge can participate in STP, but the default is "off".