I’m upgrading my home network from 1 Gbps to 2.5 Gbps, using a switch, router, etc. My system currently uses two 1 Gbps network cards, a Realtek one mounted on the motherboard and an additional Intel one on the PCI.
I would like to know the correct procedure to replace the two cards in use with a 2.5 Gbps card and disable/uninstall the two currently in use, without causing system problems.
Thanks,
Davide
@dadozts how are you using your current cards? Is there some teaming/bonding involved, or just as two separate cards?
Is the new card 2.5Gbps also a an Intel or Realtek card? If not, you will need to check whether the any addtional kernel firmware packages are available/ need to be installed. You can check what’s there in Rockstor using:
zypper se -s kernel-firmware
where you will find things like for example:
kernel-firmware-intel
kernel-firmware-network
kernel-firmware-platform
If there is no other configuration/specialized setup of the network cards, and the new one does not need specialized linux drivers, you should be able to disable the on-board network card in the BIOS, and replace the PCI card with you new one, and the system should recognize it automatically. Before any of that I would run the system update so you have the latest of everything.
Thanks,
I checked as you suggested, and the card, which is almost certainly Realtek, appears. I’m using RockStor 5.1.0-0 on a stable update.
In my case, the two network cards are independent; there’s only a few configurations done by some RockStor, but those are experiments and tests that I can easily lose.
As soon as I’ve upgraded all the hardware—four switches, one router, and at least five network cards—I’ll let you know how it goes, whether everything goes well, or you’ll see me here crying, “Help!” 
Davide