Been recentally having all kinds of stupid issues with keeping a network connection on one of my servers. Been running ZimaOS v1.6.1 just fine on a Z590I Gigabye board and all of a sudden the onboard LAN just stopped working. ZimaOS would refuse to use it and I thought okay it just died. So I bought a UGREEN USB-C 2.5GB dongle off amazon and I had network again. Well I decided for some dumb reason to update to v1.6.2 and the damn network stopped working yet again. I can’t get it to do anything. Just boots and says “Searching for network address”. I pulled the usb dongle off the system and tried it with my laptop, well the damn thing works. So WTF is wrong with ZimaOS? I have ZimaOS running on two other systems and never had any network issues, but damn it hates this particular system for some reason. Right now I have to plug in a HP docking station I had laying around to get any kind of network to the damn thing. About to wipe this system and go back to Windows Server since I’m really only using it for file storage and a few docker containers.
I would first try a different Ethernet cable. If it still having issues then I would look at the switch or router port connector to see if it has a bent pin
Its a rarity to see driver issues. But ssh into the machine and see if lists the interface with this command:
lspci | grep -i -E 'ethernet|wi-fi'
Which will list interfaces that have drivers loaded. Now if you think you have devices not getting used or disabled, then use this command:
lshw -class network
Now if you are getting devices listed as *-network UNCLAIMED. Then the interface needs to be enabled in the system side by the command line as they would never show up in the zima web gui.
As an alternative to this you can make an ubuntu install usb and see if you have networking in its live desktop after exiting its setup wizard. If you have network issues there, then you have network interfaces that don’t like the Linux kernel. There are a few 2.5G Ethernet chips out there that are troublesome since they did not supply a Linux driver to be integrated as a kernel level driver.