Unable to Assign Gateway or Get DHCP on Bridge Interface for Dual NIC (Same Subnet, Home Router)

TrueNAS General
1

Setup Details:

  • Running TrueNAS Scale on a system with two NICs (enp2s0 and enp3s0), both connected to a single unmanaged home router network: 192.168.1.0/24.
  • Primary management NIC (enp3s0) is assigned IP 192.168.1.44/24 with gateway 192.168.1.1, used exclusively for accessing the TrueNAS web interface and host services.
  • Secondary NIC (enp2s0) is not assigned any IP and is intended to be used as a member of a Linux bridge (br002), which provides connectivity to VMs.

Main Problem:

  • When enp2s0 is configured directly, it successfully receives a DHCP IP from the router.
  • After configuring br002 (with enp2s0 as its member), the bridge is UP but never receives an IPv4 address via DHCP—even after manually using dhclient br002 in the shell.
  • Attempting to assign a static IPv4 to br002 (like 192.168.1.55/24) works for local LAN traffic, but adding the same gateway (192.168.1.1) causes an error:
    “gateway already part of another nic.”
  • This happens regardless of which NIC (enp2s0 or enp3s0) is used for the bridge; only one NIC in the subnet can have the gateway.

What I’ve Tried:

  • Testing with both NICs as bridge members and direct configuration.
  • Rebooting, swapping cables and router LAN ports, and confirming the physical network works for DHCP.
  • Manually triggering DHCP on the bridge using the shell.
  • Assigning static IPs to the bridge interface (no gateway).
  • Confirming that TrueNAS Scale and all hardware are updated and functional.

Observed Behavior:

  • TrueNAS Scale allows only one gateway per subnet/network; adding the gateway to both the management NIC and the bridge NIC is blocked by the UI.
  • The bridge interface (br002) consistently fails to acquire a DHCP IP, only working for LAN routing if a static IP is manually assigned without a gateway.
  • VMs connected to br002 communicate on the LAN but cannot reach the internet, due to missing gateway configuration.

Update:

  • Even when repeating tests with enp3s0 in the bridge role, the same issue persists: unable to assign the gateway or acquire DHCP for the bridge if management NIC already uses the gateway.

Request for Advice:

  • Looking for a workaround, best practice, or alternative solution that allows VMs connected to the bridge (br002) to get both LAN and internet access, while maintaining system management access on a separate NIC—both within the same home router subnet.
  • Is there a supported configuration, proxy, or advanced routing method on TrueNAS Scale that would enable this, or is the Linux/networking gateway restriction unbreakable in this setup?