Lion, Fusion 3.1.3 - bridged network, DHCP not working - bug report

[BSDLuver]

Host: Lion

Guest: OpenBSD 4.9

Fusion: 3.1.3 (416484)

Pre Lion upgrade, things worked just fine.  Post Lion upgrade, does not work like before.

The guest has 2 NICs, one bridged, one host only.  When my MBP is connected to WiFi with an Apple Airport Extreme base station the guest is not able to obtain an IP via DHCP.  When my MBP is connected via WiFi to my Verizon 4GLTE MiFi (Novatel) the guest OS is able to obtain an IP via DHCP on the bridged network adapter.  I've restarted everything, base station, MBP, guests, etc., no change.

I tried forcing the bridged interface to en1 (WiFi) vs letting VMware autoselect, no difference.

[dpaluszek5666]

Same problem here, just a little different. Windows 7 VM cannot bridge to my Mifi 2200 when I utilizing via USB. However, when connected via Wifi, it works. Under Fusion control panel, it shows Auto-Detect, but it can't detect my Mifi modem when plugged in via USB. This did work pre-Lion.

[goodtogotech]

I have similar problem.   late 2009 macbook pro; wont pick up ip address from a windows 2008   DHCP server.  this worked fine under Snowleopard and VMware fusion 3.1  .  I now have to assign one statically for it to work on Windows 7 Enterprise N x64.  Bridge mode is set for auto.  but I am wired, not wireless.

my virtual windows 7 machine shows a Intel Pro/1000 MT network connection.  drivers is from 2008.  whats up with that?  I am guessing driver issue.

anyone else with this problem?

I am going to attempt to remove the adaper from device manager and reboot to see if that fixes the problem

I will then try to uninstall the adapter from device manager. then shutdown the vm, then remove the network adapters from vmware fusion settings and reboot.

[flowpoke]

Im having the same issue. While on OS X Lion (11A511) I ran the uninstaller, re-installed VMWare Fusion 3.1.3 and tried to install (as a Virtual Machine) Ubuntu 11.04 with network settings set to 'Bridged' mode.

The Ubuntu installer does not see the network. I have not tried the other modes (not interested in using them).

[staticemi]

Same problem here. I'm runnng several different versions of fedora and I have a Rehat EL install all with the same issue. Bridging does not work on wireless networks.

Has anyone found a solution for this problem? It's becoming critical......

- Brad

[Mikero]

Has anyone tried removing and re-adding the Network Adapter from the Virtual Machine > Settings > Network window?

[staticemi]

I did try that with no luck. I also tried installing a fresh copy of Fedora15 in a new VM but wireless bridging still did not work.

[bittondb]

Same issue here. Fusion was fine in Lion until I updated to 3.1.3. Guest OS is Win7 x86. The problem is a 100% work stoppage. We need a fix ASAP.

[bittondb]

As a follow-up, I can use NAT, so I can work for now.

[goodtogotech]

this was an odd fix for me.  In my case; I tried removing the virtual network cards from the virtual machine; and through the vmware software.  neither method worked.  So I tried booting my DHCP server; and replaced the network cable.  All the sudden things started working again.  Unfortunately, I cant pin point which one did the trick.  I would boot your router or whatever device your mac is physically connected to.    It doesnt make a whole lot of sense, but my Nic is now in bridged auto detect mode. and it works both wireless and wired.

[bewest]

After upgrading to Lion, and subsequently updating to Fusion 3.1.3 bridged networking stopped working.

In my ubuntu guest:

$ watch ifconfig

Reveals the RX Error count incrementing every time ubuntu asks for a dhcp lease for my router.

$ tail -f /var/log/sysconfig

Rreveals sending out DHCP requests for leases, but gives up and eventually disables the device after timing out.

I have an ubuntu guest I typically use to hack on networking equipment, as well as usb serial modules; both features are broken.

I tried uninstalling+reinstalling vmware fusion with aproppriate reboots, restarting the bridged networking daemon in mac's terminal, restarting the vmware daemon in mac's terminal, deleting and creating new network adapters as you suggested, downgrading and then upgrading then image, moving my image, as well as regenerating new mac addresses to no avail.

I've also tried downloading a new ubuntu ISO, booting in live mode and can observe the same symptoms in a new VM after a fresh install.

That said, soon after the upgrade, at first only the guest was able to obtain a DHCP lease, which forced me to switch to NAT temporarily.  After doing this, I may have seen bridge networking work once, after resetting my router!?  However, my router has been rebooted several times since then, and other devices have been removed and added to this network without any problems.  I've heard switching to parallels might be an option?

I really love usb and bridge networking features, is there any information I can give to help solve this issue?

Is this problem present in Snow Leopard and 3.1.3?  I'm not sure if I should hold off on upgrading the OS or vmware on several machines.

[bewest]

This is still broken.

[brucefulton]

I have students reporting that Ubuntu 10.04LTS, which fails bridged mode under vmware Fusion after upgrading to Lion, works in bridged mode under current versions of VirtualBox. So this appears to be a VMWare issue, or some other unidentified interaction between Ubuntu and Fusion on Lion that is not an issue with VirtualBox.

[bittondb]

I solved my problem by uninstalling and re-installing VMware tools. YMMV.

[brucefulton]

Good to know, but I think N/A for ubuntu server which strictly speaking doesn't require tools to run on a mac/fusion host for use as a local lamp server. If it's necessary now to install tools for a server installation under Mac Lion, I'd like confirmation and will develop a procedure. Thanks.

[bewest]

Also, I reproduced this problem with new downloads of ubuntu ISOs on newly created virtual machines, as well as doing install/reinstall dances with both Fusion and the VMWare tools on an existing image.

[Matt_Stevens]

I'm having the same problem with Fusion 4.0.1 on a Mid 2010 MacBook Pro. In my Ubuntu 10.10 VM bridged networking has not worked with Wi-Fi since upgrading to Lion. Bridged works with Ethernet, NAT works for both adapters, and bridged worked with Wi-Fi on 10.6. Bridged also continues to work on my Windows XP VM.

I've tried re-installing Fusion and creating a fresh Ubuntu 11.04 VM, it has the same problem.

[carreec]

Hi all.

I've got a similar problem. I can't do DHCP on the guest with a network card bridged to the MacBook's wireless card.

I have deeper details about the problem. On a MacBook Pro with Mac OSX 10.7, it works neither with Fusion 3.1.3 nor Fusion 4.

DHCP does not works on if guest is bridged to wireless interface. It works if bridged to the Ethernet (wired) interface. All other network traffic looks OK on wireless and wired bridges (i.e. if I setup a static IP to my guest, networking works well).

After investigation it seems that the issue comes from the firmware of the AirPort Extrem wireless card, and that a stupid endiandness problem.

In briged mode The guest machine send correctly its DHCP-Discover packets to the host. Using wireshark and/or tcpdump I can see DHCP Packets on the interface en1 (the wifi interface of my MacBook) The only unusual things is that the source mac address of the Ethernet layer is the mac address of AirPort Extrem wireless card, and *not* the mac address of VM. This is not the right behavior for a bridge! a bridge must not alter packets.

As I said before, packets that are *not* DHCP work well, thus apparently changing the source mac address is not an issue.

The *real* issue is when the packet left the MacBook's wireless interface. The device change one field in the IP packet: It set the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) to 0. This is not a big issue by itself, apparently it's only related to QoS... and my network is not overloaded. This change makes the IP checksum and UDP checksum to be recomputed. Unfortunately, the checksums are written in the *wrong bits order*, it's written in little endian whereas it should be written in big endian (for example 0xa639 instead of 0x39a6) Thus the DHCP server receives a packet with a wrong checksum and it discard it. Packets are discarded even before they can be processed by the DHCP server, that's the reason why nothing appears in the logs of DHCP server.

Here a simple schema to try to explain.

+--------------+                       +----------------+                    +----------------+

|   Linux VM   |       ok but          |    Mac Book    |   Bad checksum     |    DHCP server |

|              |    src mac of en1     |                |  src mac of en1    |                |

|  iface eth0  |  -------------------->| wifi iface en1 | -----------------> |    Pkt dropped |

+--------------+         (1)           +----------------+        (2)         +----------------+

I also attached, two files where I capture the DHCP packets sent by the I captured in (1) and (2). ( in (2) the packet is truncated but the interesting part is at the beginning )

Sometime (very rare) the DSCP is not changed, thus the checksum is not recomputed and the packets goes throw correctly (and the DHCP server reply, like in normal operations)

Last "detail". It works perfectly in wired mode. The bridge is OK - i.e. the outgoing DHCP packet is left untouched.

I hope this report will helps people to understand/fix the bug/find a workaround.

Best regards

[bewest]

Nice find.

I can confirm I'm experiencing this problem in new VM images in Fusion 3.1.3 and 4.0.  This helps explain why the error count increments when watching ifconfig during a dhcp lease.

[mpg31337]

I can confirm the same problem with OS X 10.7.1 running VMware 3.1.3 or 4.

The only time I've seen the guest receive an IP address via DHCP while bridged to the Airport Wifi card is with a Windows 7 guest.  None of the other guests I've tested (Windows XP and various Linuxes) work.

If it matters, I'm using a Mid-2011 Macbook Air.