[OpenIndiana-discuss] Vbox and nwam -no vboxnet0 ?

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Tony Brian Albers <tba at kb.dk> asks today about networking problems on
VirtualBox on OpenIndiana.  I've only run VirtualBox on Ubuntu
systems, but the following comments should still apply.

I found that VirtualBox behaves differently compared to other
virtualization systems, like OVirt, VirtManager/QEMU, and VMware/ESX,
in that VirtualBox needs separate connections for inbound and outbound
networking.  From notes I recorded over the last two years:

>> ...
>> The network setup on VirtualBox on is unusual: its initial network
>> is not bidirectional!  It only connects outbound.
>>
>> In order to get inbound connections for ssh, it is necessary to add a
>> second network adapter, which can only be down in powered-off state:
>> 
>>         VirtualBox control panel ->
>>                 Settings -> Network -> Adapter2 -> Attached-to -> Host-only adapter
>>                 Name: vboxnet0
>> 
>> plus
>>         Advanced ->
>>                 Adapter Type -> Intel PRO/1000 MT +
>>                 Promiscuous Mode: Deny +
>>                 Cable Connected
>> 
>> For the original Adapter1, we have
>> 
>>         VirtualBox control panel ->
>>                 Settings -> Network -> Adapter1 -> Attached-to -> NAT
>> plus
>>         Advanced ->
>>                 Adapter Type -> Intel PRO/1000 MT +
>>                 Promiscuous Mode: Deny +
>>                 Cable Connected +
>>                 Port Forwarding
>> 
>> On a reboot, the VM will have two networks, like this for
>> yyy.vm.example.com:
>> 
>>         % ifconfig -a
>>         em0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
>>                 options=85059b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,LRO,VLAN_HWFILTER,VLAN_HWTSO>
>>                 ether 08:00:27:f2:0b:cc
>>                 inet 10.0.2.15 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.2.255
>>                 nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
>>                 media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
>>                 status: active
>>         em1: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
>>                 options=85059b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,LRO,VLAN_HWFILTER,VLAN_HWTSO>
>>                 ether 08:00:27:36:0b:70
>>                 inet 192.168.56.101 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.56.255
>>                 nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
>>                 media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
>>                 status: active
>>         ...
>> 
>> sshd normally listens on all network interfaces, so from the
>> VirtualBox host, xxx.example.com, I can now do
>> 
>>         ssh USER at 192.168.56.101
>> 
>> The VirtualBox File -> Host Network Manager -> Properties display show
>> 
>>         vboxnet0        192.168.56.1/24
>> 
>> with a DHCP Server panel at the screen bottom that says
>> 
>>         Server address          192.168.56.100
>>         Server mask             255.255.255.0
>>         Lower Address Bound     192.168.56.101
>>         Upper Address Bound     192.168.56.254
>> 
>> The first Ethernet adapter should be a DHCP-assigned value, and the
>> second for VirtualBox VMs should be a STATIC address of the form
>> 192.168.56.x, where x is in [2,99].
>> 
>> The default router is set by DHCP to 10.0.2.2, so it should NOT be set
>> in /etc configuration files.
>> ...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
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