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6 Replies Last post: Dec 23, 2008 12:33 PM by JurgenD  

Old PITA - Change the MAC adress in VMware Workstation 6.5 ?! posted: Dec 9, 2008 11:11 AM

Click to view JurgenD's profile Novice 8 posts since
Dec 7, 2008
Some versions of VMware Workstation did allow to set manually the MAC address of the virtual adapter.
This possibility has changed for several reasons.

My personal opinion is clear. A virtual machine needs to mirror as best as possible a hardware machine.

On VMware Workstation You can not change the MAC adress, or You are bound to a limited possibility, were the first hex adresses are fixed,
so it shows on the outside, it is a virtual machine. Response of VMware is, You need to run the Server Edition. Well.....

Currently I saw, the recent version of Virtual Box does allow to enter manually the MAC address
for the Virtual Interfaces based on Intel NIC. You can enter any MAC address, including MAC of existing, hardware Intel NIC.

So my opinion, the locked-out possibility to change FULLY the mac adress of the virtual machine,
should be enabled again for all versions of VMware, as it is the possibility with other software.
Click to view continuum's profile Guru 12,616 posts since
Dec 18, 2003
It never was possible to assign ANY MAC-address to a VM by editing the vmx-file.
You were always restricted to use an address out of a VMware-address pool.

Response of VMware is, You need to run the Server Edition. Well.....

I can't believe that ...


___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters: http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html
VMware-liveCD: http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html

Click to view RDPetruska's profile Guru 15,875 posts since
Jan 11, 2005

JurgenD wrote:Well, You could on some versions, with some hack and stuff.
But this is not important.

Important is, other virtualization software does allow to enter Your own MAC adress ! Without limits on the HEX numbers ( range, pool )

So this limit should be removed on the versions of VMware.
Maybe it is an advantage for some people, but not for those who need to perform MAC spoofing
or those who need to run and develop software, which does licensing based on a MAC address.

A vitual machine needs to be as compatible as possible.


If others are doing it, then they are in violation of Internic policies! VMware allows you to change the MAC addresses of their network adapters only within the range they were assigned by Internic. If other vendors allow you to change willy-nilly, then they are breaking the law!!

If you want to do spoofing, then do it inside the guest OS at that level (there are tools to allow you to do this for *nix and Windows environments, at least.

Click to view jameslin's profile Master 1,087 posts since
Jan 31, 2005
JurgenD wrote:
Some versions of VMware Workstation did allow to set manually the MAC address of the virtual adapter.
This possibility has changed for several reasons.

Hm? AFAIK we haven't added any restrictions. We don't provide a UI for it, but manually editing the .vmx file and changing ethernet0.addressType and ethernet0.address to a MAC address from a different vendor seems to work for me.

http://sanbarrow.com/vmx/vmx-network-advanced.html#mac

I don't believe static MAC addresses are actually limited to the 00:50:56 range.

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