Hello list, Among all things in software business, networking is the area i know the least about.
What i am trying to setup is to have an older unused pc act as a backup-server. The first thing to do would be to install a current debian (disks are already pluged in). And the installation absolutely wants an internet connection. Due to physical restrictions, my router has only one connection (used by my main host), but there are more networking cards in it, so i am intending to allow a connection from the host to the backuup server, later that net is going to be used for the backing up of data. But now, i would like to avoid any additional hardware (like bridge, router, twisted pair, or such) and just have the backup server connect with a normal network cable (rj-45?) to a secondary network card of the host, and have the latter allow internet access thru it. (dhcp or fixed address, whatever is easier) In order to achieve that, i installed on the host (debian, buster for the time being) apt install bridge-utils and looked up the interfaces in question (enp0s3 and enp0s8) brctl addbr br0 brctl addif br0 enp0s3 enp0s8 but, even after rebooting, the bridge does not work ip addr show 1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: enp0s3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop master br0 state DOWN group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:00:27:e1:93:46 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 3: enp0s8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop master br0 state DOWN group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:00:27:7e:c0:bb brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 4: br0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:00:27:7e:c0:bb brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff But now, i am at a loss: even after rebooting, the interfaces are not coming up and thus i cannot install debian on the backup-server. Can anyone point me to the misunderstanding of my ways, and get me going again?