DS918+ not seeing Intel X550-T1 10Gbe card

[jeeka715]

Install:
Bare Metal Xpenology DS918+
DSM 7.2.1-69057
TCRP + Friend 0.0.6

Hardware:
ASRock X270-M ITX
Intel i7-7700
16GB Ram
2x Intel 1Gb ports I219V & I211AT (BIOS can only disable/enable BOTH ports at once)

I've been trying to add this Intel X550-T1 card to my build and I assumed it would basically be plug and play. Wrong.
Hoping someone can see the error in my way. My goal is to add this 10Gbe card to the build, knowing that the (Synology) DS918+ only supports 2 Ethernet ports, while NOT risking the loss of my existing data by making a new Loader with a slightly older build of DSM only to find out my data is not recoverable. Hence why I am hesitant to just build a fully new loader on blind faith. I have done it in the past and didn't want to repeat history.

Here's what I know/tried:

1. Plugged in the card and booted everything up. Not seen
2. Turned off BOTH onboard Gbe ports in BIOS to see if the loader automatically loads the driver and "makes room" for the Intel X550-T1 and booted up. No success.
3. Confirmed the Maxlanport in etc/synoninfo.conf  and etc.defaults/synoinfo.conf is greater than "2". They are set to "8" via WinSCP.
4. SSH > lspci -k and am only seeing the 2 built in motherboard Intel Gb ports not the Intel X550-T1 at all, nothing with "ixgbe"
5. Figuring since the DS918+ wasn't ever 10Gbe ready, I started looking into getting the drivers and adding them to the loader(?). So loaded into TCRP and gave it:

   ./rploader.sh ext ds918p-7.1.0-42661 add https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pocopico/rp-ext/master/ixgbe/rpext-index.json

   All this does is shoot back and error that "Platform not found". Also, This is the latest build for the DS918p (ixgbe) digging into the json, which I know doesn't match the build of my install. So I'm not sure if I have to wait for an update, or, my syntax is wrong above, etc?

 

Things I haven't yet tried or am hesitant:

1. Trying to edit the grub.cfg to add mac info for this 10Gbe card, as some of my research shows. But, I don't know what exactly to add/edit as I don't want to risk borking my loader and thus potentially losing any data. I have 3x14Tb drives in SHR-1.

Is there anything I'm missing, or, not going about correctly? I see a lot of others have had success with their 918+ builds and 10Gbe (Intel X540 as well as X550 cards).
Do I need to bite the bullet and try a fresh loader rebuild (really want to avoid it if I can)?
 

Thank you.

Edited August 12, 2024 by jeeka715

[jeeka715]

Success!

I wanted to post a follow up to help someone in the future with their build issues, as something else to look for when troubleshooting.

 

Issue/Fix:

My motherboard (ASRock Z270M-ITX/ac , BIOS v2.60), while set correctly to "PCIe Gen 3.0" in the BIOS for this card, it needed to be set to "Auto" for it to detect properly, FWIW. This BIOS has a very cool feature where it shows a graphic of the motherboard and what is plugged into the slots. When it showed as "empty" on the PCIe slot, I knew then that the issue wasn't the loader, it was at the motherboard level.

 

Some notes:

• There was no need to change the Link Speed away from x16 (this board has options for x16, x8x4x4 bifurcation options)
• Detected in the Loader properly as the 3rd Network Card (918+ limits to 2, but loader edits that to allow 4) and showed up in DSM 7.2.1-69057 just fine.

Hope this helps someone!