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smithy201110141
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-01-2013 01:59 AM

Adding a host-only virtual adapter in VM

Hi,

My setup is as follows.

Host: Vista 32

Guest Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS) 64 bit

I added a host-only virtual adaptor to guest but when I power up the Ubuntu VM the adaptor does not receive an IP from DHCP.  Somewhere

I read that host-only adapters are automatically connected to VMNET1 so my adapter should have received an IP.  Have I misunderstood the documentation?

However if I add a new custom host-only adapter and connect it to VMnet1, from the dropdown list, the adapter gets an IP and all is fine.

So what is the point behind host-only adapters if they're isolated from the system?

Thanks in advance for any help.

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6 Replies
milton123
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
‎01-01-2013 10:43 AM

May be your guest adapter got another IP address that might not be the host only adapter block IP address.

Cheers, Udin

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smithy201110141
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-01-2013 11:53 PM

Thanks for replying.

When I typed ifconfig -a in the linux guest, the adapter had no IP address at all.

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TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership
‎01-02-2013 04:46 AM

does the host only network share the same IP address range as you local network

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
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smithy201110141
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-04-2013 03:22 AM

Thanks for replying Tom.

I have sorted out the problem.

This is what I did:

The vmnet1 adapter on the the windows host was disabled.

After enabling the adapter the Ubuntu host-only adapter in the guest got an IP address.

However even when the vmnet1 adapter was disabled and setting the guest adapter to custom and connect it to vmnet1 it did get an IP.

I don't know what's going here.

Maybe someone could expalin this anomaly.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership
‎01-04-2013 03:36 AM

I can't tell you why you did receive a DHCP address in one case and not in the other. However the adapter in the Host-OS (VMnet1) is a virtual adapter with the IP address 192.168.x.1 by default, whereas VMware's DHCP server for this Host-Only network is 192.168.x 254. IMO disabling VMnet1 on the host should not have cause this issue. Which version/build of VMware Workstation do you use? Maybe I have the chance to reproduce this, but cannot promise anything.

André

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smithy201110141
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-04-2013 03:52 AM

Thanks Andre for your reply.

I can't tell you the exact version of workstation at present, because I don't have access to my laptop,

but I know it's the last update to version 8.  I will send the IPs of all the adapters later.

Host Vista 32 (SP2).

Guest: Ubuntu 12.04 64bit (LTS)

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