VMWare Fusion 1.1.3, SUSE 10 guest: can't receive multicast packets?

[jfriesne]

Hi all,

I've got a networking issue that I can't figure out, I'm hoping someone more knowledgable can help me.

I'm running a SUSE 10 guest on VMWare Fusion 1.1.3 on my PowerMac (which is itself running OS/X 10.5.3). I created this SUSE guest from the SUSE 10 install CDs, downloaded the SUSE patches via the online update, then installed vmware tools using the .tar.gz file's vmware-install.pl script (which included the compile step, since the updated 2.6.13-15.18-smp kernel wasn't known by the install script.

So far, so good... everything appears to be working well. I'm using "bridged networking" mode and I can ping other machines on the LAN, do file transfers, browse the web, etc. The one thing the SUSE guest isn't doing, however, is receiving multicast packets. That's a problem, since the program I'm developing depends heavily on multicast packet reception to work.

The SUSE guest can send multicast packets, which are properly received by other machines on the LAN. However, when another machine sends a multicast packet on the same multicast address (e.g. 239.255.5.5:5555), my test app (running under SUSE) doesn't ever see it. If I run /sbin/ifconfig, however, I can see that the "RX packets" counter for eth0 has increment once for each packet received... so it seems that the Ethernet driver is receiving the multicast packets, it's just not forwarding them on the user apps. This same test app works correctly on a non-virtual SUSE 10 installation, and also under MacOS/X and Windows, btw.

Also, if I run two instances of my test program on the SUSE guest, and have them both listen to the same multicast group and send multicast packets to each other, they don't get each other's packets either.

Below is a dump from /sbin/ifconfig on the SUSE guest. Does anyone have an idea as to what might be wrong?

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:32:74:19

inet addr:192.168.40.48 Bcast:192.168.40.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe32:7419/64 Scope:Link

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:124 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:80 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:12060 (11.7 Kb) TX bytes:7503 (7.3 Kb)

Interrupt:169 Base address:0x2000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback

inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0

inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1

RX packets:42 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:42 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:2708 (2.6 Kb) TX bytes:2708 (2.6 Kb)

Thanks,

Jeremy

[WoodyZ]

I'm running a SUSE 10 guest on VMWare Fusion 1.1.3 on my PowerMac (which is itself running OS/X 10.5.3).

That's a good trick since Fusion cannot run on a "PowerMac" as it is not an Intel Based Mac.

[jfriesne]

Oops, right. I'll should have said "Mac Tower with two Xeon processors, that looks like a big cheese grater". :^)

-Jeremy

[admin]

Wireless or wired? Could you possibly test on any of Workstation/Player/Server (to see if this is just a Fusion problem)?

[jfriesne]

It's wired only... the Mac does have a Wifi interface in it, but's disabled. I won't be able to test it for a week or two, since I'm out of the office, but I will try it when I get back.

[jfriesne]

Just for the record, I finally resolved this issue by creating a new VM and re-installing SUSE 10 from CD to it. In the new VM, multicast works as expected.

I think where I went wrong the first time was when I had SUSE's update mechanism update the Linux kernel to 2.6.13-15.18-smp before installing VMWare Tools... because of that, the vmware tools installer script needed to compile a kernel module from source instead of using a prepared/pre-tested module, and most likely the multicast problem was introduced there somehow.

In the new VM, I didn't upgrade; I just kept the stock kernel from the SUSE 10 CD (2.6.13-15-smp), and with that one VMWare tools installed without any compiling necessary, and multicast works. (well, I did have to rename /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0-blah-blah-whatever-it-was to just /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0 after installing VMWare tools, or else networking would be completely broken with even a ping saying only "Network is Unreachable". But I guess that's a separate issue)

Cheers,

Jeremy

[jfriesne]

Figured it out myself; see above