Workstation 12 on Fedora 23 (NAT and vmware-netcfg)

[gregoliver]

Hi,

I have used the previously mentioned library swaps to get this running on F23, but there are still a couple issues I have no idea how to resolve.

1.  NAT in my guests

5: vmnet8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000

    link/ether 00:50:56:c0:00:08 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

    inet 192.168.162.1/24 brd 192.168.162.255 scope global vmnet8

       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

    inet6 fe80::250:56ff:fec0:8/64 scope link

       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

You can see my OS has 192.168.162.1/24 for it's NAT adapter IP address (as set in /etc/vmware/networking)

My guests pull IP addresses in the range of 192.168.138.0/24 though !!  I can ping and reach everything via IP just fine somehow though - DNS does not work - packet captures show the requests coming in on the correct vmnet8 interface, but go nowhere.  This is bewilderment number one.

2.  I cannot start vmware-netcfg

I changed the default theme to get around the gtkrc theme error, but still it fails to start (from the gui or command line), so I cannot see if the settings have moved or changed somehow from WS11 -> WS12

Keep in mind all of this worked as it shoudl with WS12 on F22

Thanks,

Greg

[ElCoyote_ · Accepted solution]

For vmware-netcfg, you can use the env workaround:

1) edit /usr/bin/vmware-netcfg

2) add first toward the top of the scipt:

(I added this line just below ROOT_REQUIRED=yes)

export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS=force

[steveadler]

I've experienced the same NAT problem you are having. My workaround was to switch to bridged networking.

I'm hoping vmware releases 12.0.2 soon to fix the fedora 23 issues.

Cheers.

[gregoliver]

I need NAT - I have too many virtuals that need access through my VPN.  Starting the VPN on all my guests individually is a real pain in the ass.  I just added a manual DNS server into the guests and they all work fine with NAT.  Once I got the netcfg  running and reset the NAT interface (deleted and re-added), the IPs were properly sorted out (networks were the same on host and guest now).  I am not sure how vmware does their vmnet* stuff for NAT, but there are definitely 3 IPs from that subnet being answered by the host somehow even though they do not show up in the interface list.

1.   x.x.x.1 is assigned to vmnet8

2.  x.x.x.2 is assigned as they agteway to guests (configurable in netcfg)

3.  x.x.x.254 hands out dhcp from the host to the guests

Very strange way for vmware to handle networking, but honestly I do not know if it was like that before - it always just worked.

NAT works with an external DNS server though.

-Greg

[danth]

I am also unable to get NAT working with the guest machine. I have a Fedora 23 host, and a Windows 10 guest. This is very frustrating.

[gregoliver]

I had to update the NAT network in the network configuration app, and then set static DNS servers in the guests.  The DNS queries from guest to host when DHCP assigned are never replied to back to the guests.  Setting external DNS servers fixed it for me (8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4).

[danth]

Thank you, that solved the problem.