No Connectivity to Routable IP in Guest OS

[Reswob10]

OK, I've done a lot of testing so I apologize if this post is a little long. Also, I tried to sanitize the IPs and vendor name, so I hope things aren't too confusing.

I'm running XP as the Host OS. Guest OS is Linux with three (3) Ethernet connections that I received from a vendor. This is one of those problems where I'm not sure if the issue lies in VMWare Player or with the appliance obtained from the vendor. I've tried a couple of different appliances and seen similar problems so I'm wondering if it's one of a couple things:

1. A simple configuration mistake in VMWare Player I'm missing

2. A configuration problem with our network switching/routing configuration

I'm still trouble shooting, but just so you know what's going on (my IP is x.x.96.166 with a subnet mask of /24 and a default gateway of x.x.94.1). All configuration of the appliance takes place via a web interface, no command line on the appliance.

EDIT: Yes, I have posted this question to the vendor, but if this is a VMWare problem, I thought someone here might have seen it already and have a suggestion.

Scenario 1:

On VMWare Player, I set ethernet 1 to NAT, ethernet 2 to Bridged and ethernet 3 to Bridged.

Start appliance. Ethernet 1 corresponds to eth0 which goes DHCP to 192.168.52.128 and I connect via and set eth1 (which corresponds to ethernet2) to x.x.116.24 and set eth2 (which corresponds to ethernet 3) to x.x.94.7.

Result: I can ping and web to eth0, 192.168.52.128.:8000. I can ping and web to eth1, x.x..116.24:8000 as well as eth2, x.x.94.7:8000 - all good.

But since I want this VM to be independent of my machine, I need/want to remove the 192 address and only use the routable IPs. Specifically x.x.116.24 as that is the one the Network Admin guys assigned to me.

That brings us to....

Scenario 2:

On VMWare Player, I set ethernet 1 to NAT, ethernet 2 to Bridged and ethernet 3 to NAT.

Start appliance. Ethernet 1 corresponds to eth0 which goes DHCP to 192.168.52.128 and I connect via and set eth1 (which corresponds to ethernet2) to x.x.116.24 and set eth2 (which corresponds to ethernet 3) to x.x.94.7.

Result: I can ping and web to eth0, 192.168.52.128:8000. I cannot ping or web to eth1 or eth2.

It seems that setting ethernet 3 to NAT in VMWare Player prevents me from connecting to ethernet 2.

Scenario 3:

On VMWare Player, I set ethernet 1 to NAT, ethernet 2 to Bridged and ethernet 3 to NAT or Bridged.

Start appliance. Ethernet 1 corresponds to eth0 which goes DHCP to 192.168.52.128 and I connect via and set eth1 (which corresponds to ethernet2) to x.x.116.24 and DISABLE eth2 (which corresponds to ethernet 3).

Result: I can ping and web to eth0, 192.168.52.128:8000. I cannot ping or web to eth1 or eth2.

If eth2 is disabled, it doesn't matter if ethernet 3 is set to Bridged or NAT, I cannot get to ethernet 2. Yeah, that may seem obvious, but I had to test it.

Scenario 4:

On VMWare Player, I set ethernet 1 to Bridged, ethernet 2 to Bridged and ethernet 3 to NAT or Bridged.

Start appliance. Ethernet 1 corresponds to eth0 which goes DHCP to 192.168.52.128 and I connect via and eth1 (which corresponds to ethernet2) to x.x.94.8 and DISABLE eth2 (which corresponds to ethernet 3). I then set eth0 to a STATIC address of x.x.116.24. I then restart the appliance.

Result: I cannot ping or web to eth0 or eth1.

So it appears that for this to work, ethernet 1 needs to be set to NAT to obtain a 192 address and ethernet 2 and 3 need to be set to bridged. Then ethernet 1 picks up a 192 DHCP address for eth0 and I must use that to connect and give ethernet 2 (eth1) and ethernet 3 (eth2) routable IPs, one of which must be an IP on my subnet (x.x.94.x). Only when all three are active am I able to use the routable IP addresses.

It APPEARS, if I had to guess (and I'm not an IP expert) that my connections to the appliance are being routed through the x.x.94.8 VM adapter to the x.x.116.24 adapter. I say this because if that connection isn't Bridged and enabled, I can't get to the x.x.116.24 address.

Does any of that make sense? Am I missing something in the VMware Player configuration that would allow me to use Scenario 4? Or even, ideally, a scenario where I only have one IP active (x.x.116.24)? Or is it something in how our switches and routers are setup?

This has been driving me crazy for several days.

ANY Suggestions/Pointers to other threads would be appreciated to help me troubleshoot.

Thanks

[RDPetruska]

First question is what exactly IS this VM that requires/has 3 network connections? If it's some sort of routing device, then I'm going to assume that all interfaces except the one public-facing one are set to be custom connections.

What happens if you leave the vmx file untouched from the vendor?

Did the vendor supply ANY instructions on configuring the network interfaces? I'm assuming that they did (or at least should have).

[Reswob10]

The appliance is not doing any routing, in fact I'm not sure WHY it has three interfaces. It's supposed to work with only one active, I just can't seem to get it to work.

If I leave it untouched, I have to set the VMWare Player for ethernet 1 to be NAT, then eth0 gets a 192 DHCP address and I can ping the appliance and web into the appliance. But then, of course, the appliance is not viewable from external to my machine and it's stuck on my machine.

I've been communicating with the vendor and reading their instruction manual on a regular basis. The reason I posted here was because I opened up another appliance (a liveCD appliance where I loaded an Ubuntu LiveCD) to see what would happen. This only had one available interface. If it went DHCP and got a 192 address, I could ping it. If I set the interface for x.x.116.24 or x.x.94.8, I could not ping it. So it seemed this problem was similar to what I was seeing with the vendors appliance.

Either today or Monday I'm going to try just a normal Ubuntu appliance obtained from the VMware site... just to see what happens then.

[Reswob10]

OK, more information here:

I downloaded the Ubuntu 8.10 appliance (http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/56264) uploaded by VM Planet. I ran that one and here are the results.

Test 1:

Ran Ubuntu with Ethernet 1 interface on NAT and Ubuntu configured for DHCP. Picked up 192 address and I could ping the appliance from the host no problem. I could surf the web from the appliance.

Test 2:

Configured Ubuntu for static IP on x.x.116.24 and set Ethernet 1 to Bridged. Restarted Ubuntu appliance. No connectivity.

Test 3:

Configured Ubuntu for static IP on x.x.94.7 (same subnet as host) and Ethernet 1 to Bridged. Restarted Ubuntu appliance. No connectivity.

Again, I ask for suggestions. Am I missing something basic? Something I missed in the manual? Or should I start looking through router/switch configs?

Thanks .

[RDPetruska]

Interesting. Well, from test #1 we can conclude that at least the VMware software was all installed correctly - you have NAT working and ARE able to connect the guest out to the rest of the world. When you switch to bridged mode things seem to stop.

Questions:

#1: Do you have more than one network adapter in your host (other than the 2 VMnet ones installed by VMware)? If so, first run the Virtual Network Editor (vmnetcfg.exe, in the Player folder); on the 2nd tab, disable automatic bridging; on the 3rd tab, specify the desired physical NIC in the VMnet0 combo box.

#2: Do you have a DHCP server on your physical LAN, that you can initially configure the VM to use dhcp while switching to bridged mode (to only test one thing at a time, instead of changing to a static IP and changing to bridged at the same time)?

#3: Does your physical switch your PC is connected to have MAC address filtering and/or port limits? Some devices can be configured to only allow one MAC address per port - and your host would use this, making any bridged guests unable to connect.

[Reswob10]

Sorry I haven't replied...

#1: Do you have more than one network adapter in your host (other than the 2 VMnet ones installed by VMware)? If so, first run the Virtual Network Editor (vmnetcfg.exe, in the Player folder); on the 2nd tab, disable automatic bridging; on the 3rd tab, specify the desired physical NIC in the VMnet0 combo box.

Tried this. vmnetcfg.exe showed two adapters, One wired and one wireless. I set VMnet0 to the wired connection. Restarted Ubuntu appliance and configured adapter for my local subnet (x.x.94.7). still no luck.

#2: Do you have a DHCP server on your physical LAN, that you can initially configure the VM to use dhcp while switching to bridged mode (to only test one thing at a time, instead of changing to a static IP and changing to bridged at the same time)?

We do not have a DHCP server on our LAN and we don't have the authority to put one there.

#3: Does your physical switch your PC is connected to have MAC address filtering and/or port limits? Some devices can be configured to only allow one MAC address per port - and your host would use this, making any bridged guests unable to connect.

I talked to the Network Admin guys and they assure me we do NOT have port security turned on at any of the switches....

Wow, this is frustrating....