Solved! - Debian Linux HP t740 with Intel i350-T4 - How do I make all four ports of the i350-T4 a LAN switch?

[dba34]

I have a new Debian OS on an HP t740 with an Intel i350-T4 four port ethernet card inside the HP t740 slot. I have tried Proxmox, OPNsense, pfSense, and OpenWRT. I already have an stand alone self powered ethernet switch that works fine. I have read about bonding, teaming, and nftables, and lots of examples for awhile. I'm new to networking, but know how to use "nano" and editing files. I have a Realtek ethernet port that works fine that came installed on the motherboard. I was wanting to use this as a WAN and make the i350-T4 a four port LAN. I would like to keep the basic Debian installation. Is this possible with basic networking and which networking method should I be looking at? Bonding, bridging, etc?

 

[louie1961]

This should work, but I have never tried it personally

Open vSwitch

www.openvswitch.org

 

[nexox]

The easy way to do it on Linux (not necessarily the fastest, but fine for 1G) is to bridge the interfaces, Debian probably has some higher level way to configure that, but the low level steps are to create a bridge interface, add the hardware interfaces to the bridge, set all interfaces up, then do all your networking using the bridge interface.

 

[dba34]

Thanks louie1961 and nexox. Open vSwitch is already in the Linux kernel and just the tools need to be downloaded. I'll read more about it. I will also read more about bridging and setting up interfaces. I like the idea of just a Debian system. It's trouble free and I am comfortable with it after a few years of using it. There are also new technology methods of remote desktop I will get into using Wireguard. I have used Wireguard for all of my devices with no problems. I like my no problem Debian setup, too. Thanks again.

 

[cageek]

I was wanting to use this as a WAN and make the i350-T4 a four port LAN. I would like to keep the basic Debian installation. Is this possible with basic networking and which networking method should I be looking at? Bonding, bridging, etc?

Using NetworkManager, you can create a bridge that combines individual interfaces. Search for "nmcli bridge" on google, etc. and you should get a lot of tutorials, instruction, etc.. The instructions should work the same on most modern linuxs with systemd & NM.

 

[boerni666]

Multiple options possible. Networkmanager shouldnt be used on servers, debian basic iface networking should work also, but since Debian 13, systemd is possible too:

Here is my purely systemd-networkd based bridge Setup which bridges every single network iface, so the machine kinda acts like a dumb switch.


Modifiy the [Match] Section in 10_bind.network to your liking to only use the ports you want.


/etc/systemd/network/10_bind.network:

[Match]
Name=enx* eno* enp* eth*

[Network]
Bridge=br0

/etc/systemd/network/br0.netdev:

[NetDev]
Name=br0
Kind=bridge
MACAddress=DE:AD:BE:EF:13:37

/etc/systemd/network/br0.network:

[Match]
Name=br0

[Network]
DHCP=no
DNS=192.168.0.1
Gateway=192.168.0.1
Address=192.168.0.2/24

 

[dba34]

Thanks cageek and nexox again. I finally figured out a bridge. It works, but I have a question mark on the "network" icon in the top right corner. Below is what did work:

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# Configure HP t740 with Intel i350-T4 PCIe ethernet adapter

# HP t740 Realtek ethernet port for "WAN"
auto enp2s0f0
iface enp2s0f0 inet manual

# Intel i350-T4 ethernet ports for "LAN"
auto enp1s0f0
iface enp1s0f0 inet manual

auto enp1s0f1
iface enp1s0f1 inet manual

auto enp1s0f2
iface enp1s0f2 inet manual

auto enp1s0f3
iface enp1s0f3 inet manual

# Creating the bridge
auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports enp2s0f0 enp1s0f0 enp1s0f1 enp1s0f2 enp1s0f3



My above method probably needs more work. I read about "allow-hotplug" on USB devices and will try that on some USB ports. "auto" was supposed to be okay on what I did above.

boerni666 Thanks very much for the file you included in your message. That looks better than mine. I'll try that on my Debian 13. I did alot of reading on networking, but did not find anything specific to what I wanted. There were combinations of iptables, nftables, and networking and deprecated commands from years ago. I wanted something without all of that and up to date. This is the first time I have completed a networking type problem and I am getting more into this. This is working out just fine. I'll be busy for awhile with this.

 

[boerni666]

yeah, the question mark probably comes from network manager, because you used the debian network/interfaces config stuff and network manager is another way to do it, but ignoes the stuff in /etc/network/interfaces and has its own way to do that.

If you dont use wifi and this is a server, i would uninstall networkmanager.

 

[dba34]

Thanks boerni666 and nexox. This HP t740 will be mobile and will move around alot on the road with a special 12VDC step up adapter to 19VDC. I have a Wi-Fi adapter installed on the board and I will still use it periodically. My cell modem will be attached to an ethernet port. I have turned the Wi-Fi on and off in the terminal. If there was a way to operate the Wi-Fi, make my connections, and operate everything inside the terminal without NetworkManager, then I could move on to the next latest method. "nm-connection-editor" and "nmtui" are nice apps, but they did not help me. I saw things better in the "interfaces.txt" file. My goal is to keep it all basic mainstream Linux that will be maintained for awhile. So far, I'm not having fan or heat problems with this PC.

 

[boerni666]

Ok, if you use wifi, then you should stick to networkmanager, you could also operate your bridge/switch from there. thats a pretty rare use case tho.

 

[nexox]

There are certainly ways to do wifi without NetworkManager, I personally run wpa_supplicant and dhclient manually on some machines, but as much as NetworkManager irritates me it really does do wifi pretty well, so I keep it on some laptops.

 

[dba34]

Solved! Thanks very much to all for everything! I will run with this and experiment also. I have a second HP t740 to experiment with, too. I'll learn more about Systemd-Networkd as well and still have Open vSwitch to read more about. My pure Debian system is just fine and easy to run. Thanks again.