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xerces8
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎10-09-2013 02:10 PM

Bug: wrong DNS server selected for NAT setup

Hi!

I encountered this problem with VMware Player 5.0.2 and 6.0.0.

See NAT: DNS returns bogus entries for gory details.

In short: With a VM that uses NAT networking (which is the default), VMware sometimes picks up and uses the wrong DNS server from the hosts network.

In my case, my host (Windows :smiling_face_with_sunglasses: is connected by LAN cable to a home router. Once in the past, I connected via WLAN to another network.

VMware Player uses the DNS settings from the WLAN, even if it is currently not connected.

Workaround: turn off automatic "Auto detect available DNS servers" in the NAT settings and enter the correct DNS server IP manually.

Details:

- my hosts LAN connection has the IP 192.168.222.117, the default gateway is 192.168.222.1 and DNS server also 192.168.222.1

- the now disconnected WLAN adapter had the IP 192.168.1.3, gateway 192.168.1.1 and name server 213.161.0.10 213.161.0.20

I used a network sniffer (WireShark) to find out that VMware player was sending DNS queries to 213.161.0.10.

Feel free to ask for any other information.

Regards,

David

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1 Reply
treee
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎04-12-2014 06:36 AM

I've read your other topic and started doing some research myself because I thought I was running into the same problem...and I was right! The vmnet8 interface is sending the DNS traffic to an old cached DNS server because it seems to fail to renew it when you connect to a different network. After some reinstalls of VMware Player when I was at work (had some spare time left and tried 6.0, 5.0.3 and later on 6.0.1) I got it to work again. Then I went home and ran into the issue again. Did some sniffing with Wireshark when it occurred to me that there was an easier option to check if I had the bug: open the VPN tunnel to the office and see if things started working spontaneously. And surely, after opening the tunnel I could resolve again without me changing anything in the configuration of either VMware Player or the vm.

Right now I can either use the VPN or simply set the DNS server manually as a workaround (both work fine) but it sure would be nice if the vmnet8 interface would use the correct DNS server (not the old cached one). The way it is now is just annoying.

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