[15:45] <sulex> Hello, I have an issue with a box that is giving me headaches since hours now and you guys are my last chance. Long story short, I need to bring up an old Proliant G7 with ubuntu 18.04 for __legacy reasons__. I have netplan 0.99 on it. I need the box to work with 3 NICs, all of them are attached to the same switch. When the box boots, only the first NIC seems active, and netplan applies the dedicated 
[15:46] <sulex> config correctly, the other NICs are dead until I resurrect them by ´ip link´ setting the state to up. If I "apply" netplan after that the NIC won't get the netplan configuration, but if I make the configuration manually by ip, they work. Please help me on this or I'll start to kick this box around the server room :)
[15:46] <sulex> https://pastebin.com/9QwC8LbX
[15:48] <sulex> this is the debug from netplan: https://pastebin.com/r7Nn28mA
[15:54] <sulex> my main questions are two 1) why the hell the 2nd 3rd and 4th NIC start with down state, considering I have no BL or stuff like that 2) why after i bring them up by ip link, netplan is not applying the config. I have tried the impossible, restarting networkd and any solution from stackoverflow(:)) about problems that may be similar to this
[20:15] <slyon> sulex: Do those interfaces actually have a cable connected? and have a L2 carrier/link?
[20:17] <slyon> you could try putting a systemd-networkd override config in place, e.g. /etc/systemd/network/10-netplan-enp3s0f0.network.d/override.conf containing something like: "[Network] ConfigureWithoutCarrier=yes"
[20:17] <slyon> there is also the `ignore-carrier` setting in newer versions of netplan, but I think that is not available on 0.99/Bionic
[20:24] <slyon> see https://systemd.network/systemd.network.html#ConfigureWithoutCarrier=
[22:51] <sulex> slyon: yes, cables checked, switch ports checked and active, VLANs wiped to get rid of possible troubles. Tomorrow I will try your hint and see what happens. Thanks for your help, really appreciate it