Bridge networking question

[andrew204]

This is a linux host with Winxp client. There are two NIC. eth0 is configured as NAT (vmnet8) and eth1 is bridge (vmnet0).

My question is if I need to assign an IP address to eth1 on the host, or should that be left unspecified on the host. When I assign an IP to that bridged NIC from the client, that number doesn't seem to be visible on the host when I run "ifconfig eth1". Since the NIC is really on the host only, I am not sure how the client can communicate through that NIC if the host can't "see" it.

[WoodyZ]

My question is if I need to assign an IP address to eth1 on the host, or should that be left unspecified on the host.

That depends on the Host's requirements for using it and has nothing to do with the Guest per se.

When I assign an IP to that bridged NIC from the client, that number doesn't seem to be visible on the host when I run "ifconfig eth1". Since the NIC is really on the host only, I am not sure how the client can communicate through that NIC if the host can't "see" it.

When running ifconfig on the Host you cannot and should be able to see any of the network adapters settings in the Guest.

What Host OS and version?

What Guest OS and version?

What VMware Product and version?

Does the Host have more then one physical network adapter and if yes are they all active?

[andrew204]

When running ifconfig on the Host you cannot and should be able to see any of the network adapters settings in the Guest.

Did you mean to say "should not be able to see"?

I can see vmnet1 and vmnet8, but I cannot see vmnet0, which is the bridged connection, using ifconfig. But I do have a /dev/vmnet0. The vmnet-bridge process also seems to be up and running using "ps aux | grep vmnet"

/usr/bin/vmnet-bridge -s 6 -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid -n 0

I am not getting eth1 to communicate through vmnet0 on the client, hence the reason for my question. eth0 works fine, both on the host and on the client (through vmnet8).

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr e0:cb:4e:26:cd:92 
          inet addr:192.168.0.15  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::e2cb:4eff:fe26:cd92/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:13454 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:8587 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:3218881 (3.0 MiB)  TX bytes:1769031 (1.6 MiB)
          Interrupt:67 Base address:0x6000

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:b3:4c:4b:8a 
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

What Host OS and version?

What Guest OS and version?

What VMware Product and version?

Does the Host have more then one physical network adapter and if yes are they all active?

Linux host Slackware 13.37 (Kernel is 2.6.37.6)

Guest is WinXP

VMPlayer 3.1

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

andrew204 wrote:

When running ifconfig on the Host you cannot and should be able to see any of the network adapters settings in the Guest.

Did you mean to say "should not be able to see"?

Yes I meant to say that because it's imposable to see how the Windows Guest's Network Adapters are configured by running ifconfig on the Host and you didn't explain yourself well/ or properly previously however I usually take technical information literally and not try to guess you meant something different then what you said like it now appears in this case.

I can see vmnet1 and vmnet8, but I cannot see vmnet0, which is the bridged connection, using ifconfig.

It is normal and expected to not see vmnet0 via ifconfig.

I am not getting eth1 to communicate through vmnet0 on the client, hence the reason for my question. eth0 works fine, both on the host and on the client (through vmnet8).

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:b3:4c:4b:8a 
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Well eth1 isn't active or listed as UP so that by itself is one issue and the other issue is if the Host is physically multihomed and more then one physical network adapter is active then due to a bug in auto-bridging vmnet0 needs to be bridged to a specific adapter and that is a big problem with VMware Player 3.x because VMware, for some stupid reason, removed the Virtual Network Editor from VMware Player 3.x and this is needed to properly use Bridged networking on physically multihomed Hosts.  On a Window Host this is relitively easy to fix but not so on a Linux Host as the needed components are not included in the VMware Player installer for Linux yet it is, althought not installed by default, in the VMware Player installer for Windows.  The workaround for VMware Player under Linux is to extract the relevent missing files from a VMware Workstation for Linux installer and manually install the missing files (this has been covered in the forms in the past) or install VMware Workstation and just use the VMware Player and the Virtual Network Editor from the VMware Workstation install.

[andrew204]

WoodyZ wrote:

Well eth1 isn't active or listed as UP so that by itself is one issue and the other issue is if the Host is physically multihomed and more then one physical network adapter is active then due to a bug in auto-bridging vmnet0 needs to be bridged to a specific adapter and that is a big problem with VMware Player 3.x because VMware, for some stupid reason, removed the Virtual Network Editor from VMware Player 3.x and this is needed to properly use Bridged networking on physically multihomed Hosts.  On a Window Host this is relitively easy to fix but not so on a Linux Host as the needed components are not included in the VMware Player installer for Linux yet it is, althought not installed by default, in the VMware Player installer for Windows.  The workaround for VMware Player under Linux is to extract the relevent missing files from a VMware Workstation for Linux installer and manually install the missing files (this has been covered in the forms in the past) or install VMware Workstation and just use the VMware Player and the Virtual Network Editor from the VMware Workstation install.

You were correct. I had incorrectly assumed that if the interface shows up on the ifconfig output then it must be active. All I had to do was "ifconfig eth1 up" and then the client recognized it, and it worked fine.

A few additional things I had to do to make it work consistently:

I had to add entries in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules so that the correct cards are assigned eth0 and eth1.

I also had to kill the process vmnet-bridge and invoke it again using the option "-e eth0" (to exclude eth0 from bridged). It seems this command is automatically invoked by /usr/bin/vmware-networks, and I am not sure how to tell it to use the -e option.