Adding GPU Causes NIC Card to Stop Working

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shaywood

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Aug 29, 2023
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Hello, hoping you can help me. I've been running a Proxmox server on a Dell 3891 for over a year. When I setup the system, I added a dual port 2.5g NIC card, which I use to connect to my router. I'm including my current network bridge screenshots. Today, I inserted a GTX1650 GPU into the PCE-I 16 slot next to the NIC card, which is in the small PCE-I slot.

I booted into BIOS and noticed the NIC lights flashing. As soon as I boot into Proxmox the lights stop flashing. Proxmox appears to boot normally, but I can't access any VM's or the GUI. And, the NIC activity/link lights continue to NOT flash at all. Plugging the network cable into the onboard network port shows flashing lights, but I can't access Proxmox. Probably because the IP address is tied the NIC MAC address. I then plugged the network card back into the NIC card, removed the GPU and rebooted - and I can access everything as normal.

Any ideas?
 

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This is a common issue. The name of the network device depends on the PCI ID. When you add (or remove or enable or disable) PCI(e) devices, the devices after it (in the ID order) get a different PCI ID from the motherboard BIOS. Find out what the new name is with ip a (after logging into the Proxmox host console using a physical keyboard and display) and adjust the network configuration in /etc/network/interfaces accordingly.
 
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Alternatively, you could try putting the enp2s0 device, which I SUSPECT is your on-board network card to auto-start ( you can try plugging a laptop/pc directly in that port without a switch (and without wifi) to verify while the system is still on). That way (hopefully) allows you to start and connect to proxmox on that port to further configure it (aka, set the correct new device-names as leesteken mentioned)

Still would be a good idea to take a look at what it is doing/saying during boot though, cause it's a bit strange that there are no new devices already in the config after it has booted once. The few times I had a device-rename after a boot, it also already automatically added the new names to the config.
 
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Thanks - this worked. I had the same problem, I added an Intel RTX A400 video card and lost my network card.

I did an 'ip a' to see what device name it thought the network card was. Then I edited /etc/network/interfaces and changed the device name here to match what appeared in 'ip a'. I did a reboot to ensure the change held.

For me, the network card device name prior to adding the video card was 'enp11s0' and after it was 'enp12s0'.

What does astound me - and don't get me wrong I am loving learning and running Proxmox - is that people seem to think that upgrading hardware by adding a video card and tanking the network card (which on a Proxmox machine is the primary method of communication) is somehow ok and normal and just another thing to be conquered. I would hate to normalize this odd behavior. In the modern age, any software including Proxmox should be able to handle the addition of a video card without losing network capability.
 
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