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rm5

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 4, 2022
3,156
3,631
United States
I recently bought a ZT Openrack server from eBay (the seller mentioned it was a OCP server) planning to use it as a simple file server, and it arrived a few weeks ago. However, it appeared to not connect to the internet, and upon further inspection, the interface was not working.

A few things that I should mention first:

  • It has one SFP+ 10GB connection, and an Ethernet connection
  • Both the SFP+ and the Ethernet are plugged into a Netgear GS724T switch. The switch works perfectly fine with other computers.
  • When the SFP+ is connected, the light next to the port does not light up (possibly indicating a problem with either the cable or the port)
  • When the Ethernet is connected, the green light lights up but there still is no signal.
  • This problem seems to continue throughout the several operating systems I've tried to install.
Here are the operating systems I've installed on the server:

  • Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop - What it's currently running
  • Ubuntu 20.04 Server
  • TrueNAS Core
  • Windows 10 Home Edition
  • ProxMox Virtual Environment
I've also looked through all of the BIOS settings on the server to no avail.

The outputs of the commands I've tried are below.

ip link show

Code:
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp132s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:8c:fa:cf:8c:90 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

Setting the interface to up via ip link set enp132s0 up gives this:

Code:
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp132s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:8c:fa:cf:8c:90 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

But it still doesn't work.

lspci | grep Network

Code:
84:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 10 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)

nmcli device show

Code:
GENERAL.DEVICE:                         enp132s0
GENERAL.TYPE:                           ethernet
GENERAL.HWADDR:                         00:8C:FA:CF:8C:90
GENERAL.MTU:                            1500
GENERAL.STATE:                          10 (unmanaged)
GENERAL.CONNECTION:                     --
GENERAL.CON-PATH:                       --
WIRED-PROPERTIES.CARRIER:               off
IP4.GATEWAY:                            --
IP6.GATEWAY:                            --

GENERAL.DEVICE:                         lo
GENERAL.TYPE:                           loopback
GENERAL.HWADDR:                         00:00:00:00:00:00
GENERAL.MTU:                            65536
GENERAL.STATE:                          10 (unmanaged)
GENERAL.CONNECTION:                     --
GENERAL.CON-PATH:                       --
IP4.ADDRESS[1]:                         127.0.0.1/8
IP4.GATEWAY:                            --
IP6.ADDRESS[1]:                         ::1/128
IP6.GATEWAY:                            --
IP6.ROUTE[1]:                           dst = ::1/128, nh = ::, mt = 256

nmcli connection show

Code:
NAME                UUID                                  TYPE      DEVICE
Wired connection 1  54ead445-75b8-33eb-b656-2520246f6851  ethernet  --

Restarting the NetworkManager service with sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager and sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager && sudo systemctl start NetworkManager does absolutely nothing.

I cannot download or install packages easily unless I put all of the dependencies on a flash drive and manually install them with dpkg.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
How are you connecting the SFP+ port? is it a DAC cable or transceiver? possible that the transceiver isn't compatible (they are picky)


The ethernet port is probably not a general purpose ethernet port but a IPMI interface (designed for remote management) - plug a monitor into the VGA connection and hard boot it, you will see something like 'IPMI Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' (where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is a ip address) try accessing that IP in a browser on your lan like http://10.0.0.1 etc.
 
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Sorry to be slow here, I was out of town and didn't have access to the server.

I just configured IPMI, and ran ethtool on the interface eth0, which is the 10 Gb SFP port.

I realized by doing this that I need a Fiber-optic SFP cable, not a DAC cable. From my research, they're pretty hard to find (can't find any on Newegg or Ebay), so I will call a local cable store on Monday and see if they have any in stock.
 
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