(I am new to servers and Linux, and I am learning by doing.)
I installed an X710-DA2 dual SFP+ PCIe card in my server computer, but the system looses connectivity when swapping to using it as the management port for my installation of Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE). It also doesn’t work if I select the NIC’s active port during installation of PVE. I’ve run updates using one of the motherboards 1GbE ports to ensure my current installation is up to date, and I’ve successfully tested the card & attached networking equipment (using Windows) to ensure proper function.
I’ve seen driver installation instructions on Intel’s, but they don’t make sense to me. For instance, it says to run the “make” command, but everything else about the command is missing, and PVE says something to the effect of “make” not being a recognized command.
I’ve also heard that the card’s documentation should include repository information for updates, but I was unable to find anything about that in the provided docs.
So: how do I make this NIC card work?
Well that is a little bit of a mystery. You are having a a bit of an unusual problem.
The drivers for the X710 series of NIC’s have been built into the Linux kernel since time immemorial. (well, at least since 2014).
These NIC’s should not require any driver installation at all. The i40e kernel module should just be detected and work on its own.
I wonder if maybe your SFP+ module is not recognized by the kernel driver.
A few things to check from the console.
1.) Does the NIC show up as a network device in “ip a” or ifconfig?
2.) Does the NIC show up in lspci?
3.) If you do lspci -vvv -s are any of the detailed outputs helpful in debugging?
4.) What SFP+ module are you using? Do you have any others you can try?
I know this is not the exact adapter, but my server and my workstation both have Intel XL710-QDA2 NIC’s in them, and they have just worked out of the box, as long as I have given them good modules. (they didn’t quite like DAC cables in QSFP+ though.)
Generally this is the experience with Intel’s server NIC’s on pretty much any flavor of Linux or BSD, including Proxmox.
Well, I spent half my sick-day-off-work working on this. I planned to start troubleshooting with the questions you asked after trying one last time to set up the card (so to speak).
So, I gave it another go, this time leaving the management bridge in place and trying to add a second bridge for VMs to use. After the fourth tutorial, I got it figured out.
I still can’t quite think of what the trouble was to start with, but I’ve been battling ghosts in my haunted server for a while, now. . . (sometimes it’s just me)