WebAdmin Inaccessible: Needs to Be Fixed via CLI throuch CC

With ~235 views thus far and not a single reply, the only fix I can think of is to boot up a second VM and manually transfer over each network definition one by one to a new install of UTM... Clearly Sophos' forum is still suffering from the same issue that's hounded this forum since Sophos shut down the Astaro forum... there's simply a lack of knowledgeable users on this forum due to losing those voices years ago when the switch occurred, and it's abundantly clear those users never bothered coming back (it's why I left after all).

• I don't have some weird, one-off setup that's outside the norm... what's occurring should not be occurring on a simple 4 switch setup (3 LAN, 1 WAN)

The issue did end up being the bridge of eth0 & eth1, coupled with the hardware MACs of the 4 ethernet ports, as the previous server board's hardware MACs were still attached to the 4 interfaces within the old Sophos config.  After manually assigning the old hardware MACs in the VM's settings, then removing all interfaces except eth0, allowed me to manually assign the WebAdmin IP to eth0 via ifconfig, restoring temporary access.

•  It should also be notated that even though I re-gained WebAdmin access, it's now impossible to utilize any of the backup configs I have because UTM is incorrectly modifying the hardware switch layout, switching eth1 <-> eth3, where eth1 is a LAN port and eth3 is the WAN port.  I've tried deleting all interfaces, adding them back one by one in chronological order (eth0, eth1, eth2, then eth3), shutting down UTM before adding the next, and as soon as eth3 is added, UTM replaces eth1 with eth3 and eth3 with eth1, regardless of the hardware MACs.
  • To provide a visual, prior to eth3 being added, ifconfig and WebAdmin will show eth0 with a MAC ending in 00, eth1 ending in 01, eth2 ending in 02.  eth3's MAC ends in 03, yet as soon as eth3 is added, eth0 ends in 00, eth1 ends in 03, eth2 in 02, and eth3 in 01.
    
    
• I deleted all interfaces and switches from ESXi, except for vSwitch0 (eth0, as it houses the kernel management switch), re-creating all interfaces on both ESXi and Sophos, yet I am unable to get Sophos to stop switching eth1 <-> eth3.
  • I've modified the hardware switches themselves under cc OBJS (yes, I did write the changes before exiting), swapping eth1's and eth3's hardware MACs to the correct ones, yet as soon as a reboot occurs, UTM switches them back... WTF
    (changes in the OBJS database are supposed to survive reboots).

JW, in order to promote more participation, I won't read any thread that has a post newer than yesterday - I suspect others do something similar.  In this case, I would try editing /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules to change the NIC order to what existed in your prior VM.  Don't forget to reboot after you save the changed file.  Any luck with that?

Cheers - Bob

Bob, thanks a bunch! that worked =]

TL;DR: nothing below has to do with OP issue

My frustration wasn't directed towards you, any moderator, or any other knowledgeable member who contributes to this forum.  Technical knowledge with Sophos comes from experience using it, and by essentially ostracizing the veteran Astaro forum users when the abrupt switch was made to this current forum years ago, it severely damaged the knowledge base of users to pull from.  My frustration doesn't come from not receiving an answer right away (I expect not to get answers on forums for a few days), but from the amount of views this had without a single response, which shows this forum has still not recovered from the damage Sophos inflicted upon it years ago... that's what's frustrating.

It's frustrating to me that while Sophos' forum is a better layout, the "I don't care about current users' experience" rollout by Sophos years ago, with the abrupt shutdown of the Astaro phpBB-based forum, resulted with a large number of knowledgeable users of UTM simply throwing up their hands to community involvement because this forum looks and operates nothing like the phpBB-based forum Astaro was; this made navigating this new forum a massive, frustrating inconvenience.  So when a technical issue gets hundreds of views and no responses, it's frustrating that Sophos pushed out a lot of previous Astaro forum members who would have been able to chime in. I understand and agree with your point about not responding for a day to encourage community participation, as Sophos expecting yourself and a handful of others to always respond with technical advice isn't sustainable, let alone practical.