Maybe that’s the full number of RTL8127 users here?
Snark aside, TrueNAS is an appliance OS conservatively based on a LTS kernel. It is not expected that users jump on new hardware as soon as it hits the shop—rather that they scrap second-hand parts for cost-effective builds, or buy new but from older genartions of hardware.
TrueNAS the company has no incentive whatsoever to spend any developer time on backporting a driver which is NOT required for the Enterprise product; CE freeloaders can wait until base is switched to a newer LTS.
O tempora o mores…
Joke aside, if Realtek has stepped up its quality standards, it is good news.
This again shows the difference between the old FreeBSD based TrueNAS Core / FreeNAS, and the Linux based TrueNAS CE / SCALE.
With so many Linux users now wanting to use TrueNAS CE, many assume or expect that they can get fast package updates. Whether its for NUT / UPS updates or various kernel modules, it does not seem to mater.
Some new hardware drivers are only added to current Linux kernel, and not back ported to prior kernels, (like LTS kernels). This is unlike some of the BSD development which allowed more compatibility between different kernels and drivers.
People do say it’s just a single update. But, the developers do need to concentrate on stability and functionality, especially for the paying customer’s product.
In someways, what is needed is a step by step guide of how to install newer packages or kernel modules on TrueNAS CE. With of course, a huge warning requiring click to accept before displaying such guide.
Look, I understand that merging anything into an enterprise grade product takes significant amount of testing to ensure that things do not break. 25.10 is tagged “Early adopter” for that reason.
I don’t think Realtek has upped their driver game as much. Perhaps I have yet to hit a snag that some folks might hit in a couple of hours.
I have the luxury of being able to wait since I have a few NICs lying around that I can make do with, but I am also extremely irritated with the atlantic driver for the AQC113, and the AQC113 in general.
@Arwen: In someways, what is needed is a step by step guide of how to install newer packages or kernel modules on TrueNAS CE. With of course, a huge warning requiring click to accept before displaying such guide.
Something that passed my mind since folks bringing up how realtek doesn’t matter for enterprise; why not just add the drivers then & let CE users enjoy/suffer as needed? Is there a real downside that I’m not seeing? Enterprise won’t care since they won’t use the nics, while CE users will either be happier than they currently are.
I feel this right now because I just purchased a retail NAS box that online reviewers and content creators said worked well with TrueNAS, but failed to mention it has issues with VLAN filtering and that newer drivers are out of reach until some future date. I guess that level of testing is just too much to ask for. (Also my fault for not researching)
I’d suggest a SOP is at play here, ie why make exceptions for Realtek that you wouldn’t make for other brands, leading to even more confusion about what to include or not. From a management point of view it’s easier to ride a single LTS train, be “late” to every party re: driver support, but benefit from drivers being potentially bug fixed in the meantime.
I agree that a resource guide re: how to get into developer mode + how to compile for a NIC, NUT, or whatever. Has anyone looked if ixsystems has published documentation along these lines that could be leveraged as a starting point to build a community resource guide?
Looks like you got your wish: Latest T3 mentions kernel 6.18 for TrueNAS 26.04. In less time than it would take to back port something and test it, you’ll have it available in a regular release.
You could try the nightly on a separate boot environment and see how it does for you, then roll back if you prefer something stable day to day.
By extension, all “back port something” requests are likely best served by waiting: Kernel features come with year.04; system package features come with even-year.04 because those have the previous odd-year Debian release. NUT for example was updated with Debian 13, which makes the new version available in TrueNAS 26.04
Found it quite funny that I recently watched this video where jake tivy tries a new minisforum pc with TrueNAS and can’t connect to it’s 10G NIC. He’s then confused that there seem to be no drivers for it.
Generally our policy with anything beyond what’s officially supported in the UI (like startup and shutdown scripts, for example) is that we’ll tell you how to get there (this is where you enter the script), but won’t tell you how to configure it (this is what should be in the script) past that point. That’s definitely something that could happen over here though if community members wanted to work on a resource.
I wrote a script for this (disclosure: using AI tools), and posted it on GitHub at geoboule/truenas_rtl8127. Since I am a new user I can not post the direct URL.
It installs the build tools inside a container, so: it doesn’t require installing any packages on the host, nor e.g. enabling developer mode.
I tested it on TrueNAS 25.10.1, but: it should work assuming you’re on 24.10+ and have docker installed.
If you’re going to run it: please read the README and the instructions at the top of the script first, and look through the code to make sure you trust it.
Kernel LTS 6.18 is included in the 26.04 project - closing as implemented, given the earlier indication that 6.15 or later was required to provide this support.
