Description
A number of people have reported that networking initially works, but seems to stop after a period of time, perhaps hours or days. Specifically, DNS lookups (e.g. www.vmware.com or www.apple.com) stop working, but if you were to access a site by IP address (e.g. 72.247.74.52 or 17.112.152.32), it does work. Access by IP address working is an important distinction between this and any other bugs; if access by IP address doesn't work, it may not be related. Another critical feature of this bug is that the host networking still works . Reports seem to indicate that this problem is limited to NAT mode networking. Workarounds include running sudo /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/boot.sh --restart.We want to fix this, but have never been able to reproduce this bug in-house; we need your help to track it down. Somewhere along the way, the DNS lookup (or reply) is getting dropped, and we need to know where. To figure out where it's being dropped, we need packet traces from multiple layers at the same time (so if one of them shows the packets of interest but the next layer doesn't, we've gotten closer to identifying the problem). The layers are from inside the guest, from the virtual network layer, and from the host; all taken at the same time when networking doesn't work . A bonus would be a set of simultaneous traces when the system is good (so if you frequently see this problem, perhaps you could take a set when you start up, and if/when things go bad, take another set). When you take a set of traces, try to minimize other networking activity as it'll make the traces easier for us to read. You will need administrator privileges to take traces. Remember to generate some traffic from the guest while taking the traces, e.g. visit a website.
Taking a trace from inside the guest
Directions depend on the guest OS. Use your favorite packet capture tool, such as Wireshark.I'll update this part with more details when I get time.
Taking a trace from the virtual network layer
Use vmnet-sniffer, located in /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmnet-sniffer (included with Fusion). Example syntax issudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmnet-sniffer -e -w ~/Desktop/vmnet.pcap vmnet8
This will log to vmnet.pcap on your desktop, overwriting any previous contents. When you're done taking the trace, use control-c to break.
Taking a trace from the host
Use your favorite packet capture tool, such as Wireshark or tcpdump (included in OS X). Make sure you're capturing on the interface that the virtual machine is using! For example, if you're using a wired connection, you might dosudo /usr/sbin/tcpdump -i en0 -w ~/Desktop/host.pcap
This will log to host.pcap on your desktop, overwriting any previous contents. When you're done taking the trace, use control-c to break. Unlike vmnet-sniffer, you won't see packets as they come in.
Other information to include
- Host OS, e.g. 10.5.5, 10.4.11, something else?
- How you're accessing the network. Wired/wireless (what model access point)? Through a router (what brand), directly to a modem, something else?
- What guest OS, including bitness, flavor, and patch level? e.g. "Windows XP Professional SP3 32-bit", or "Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit with all updates as of today"
- What type of network adapter does the guest see? e.g. e1000, vmxnet, AMD PCnet-PCI II, something else?
- How often does this occur?
Once you've got all this, zip it all up and get it to us somehow, such as by posting in this thread. If you're worried about the traces containing sensitive information, you can email them to fusion-feedback at the obvious domain. Thanks!
and now no guest with NAT configuration will work anymore.
