(Bug?) Cloning a VM in WS6 does not clone MACs of virtual ethernet cards

[moose2]

Hi,

I just discovered a bit of awkward behaviour in VMWare Workstation 6. I'm not sure if it's a bug or not but it caused me some trouble so I thought I might post it here in case it helps other people.

It seems that when you clone a VM in VMWare 6 it is possible that the network adaptor on the clone will be given a different MAC Address. This can then cause problems for the guest OS. For example, I tried it on a Gentoo install, and because the network adapter's MAC address had apparantly changed since the last boot, it assumed it was a second network card and mapped it to eth1 instead of eth0, and then all my networking failed because eth1 had no initialization scripts.

I think it's fixed now but just a quick note to any others who have this problem.

[RDPetruska]

>It seems that when you clone a VM in VMWare 6 it is possible that the network adaptor on the clone will be given a different MAC Address.

God, I sure hope so. This is to prevent MAC-address conflicts, as no 2 network devices may be on the same network with the same MAC address. Since you are cloning, Workstation assumes you are going to actually use the copy you are creating.

[Liz]

It shouldnt ever do so.. that would be a bad thing to do.. MACs are supposed to be unique.. All hell could break lose with 2 cards with the same MAC

[KevinG]

Hi,

I just discovered a bit of awkward behaviour in

VMWare Workstation 6. I'm not sure if it's a bug or

not but it caused me some trouble so I thought I

might post it here in case it helps other people.

It seems that when you clone a VM in VMWare 6 it is

possible that the network adaptor on the clone will

be given a different MAC Address. This can then

cause problems for the guest OS. For example, I

tried it on a Gentoo install, and because the network

adapter's MAC address had apparantly changed since

the last boot, it assumed it was a second network

card and mapped it to eth1 instead of eth0, and then

all my networking failed because eth1 had no

initialization scripts.

I think it's fixed now but just a quick note to any

others who have this problem.

Giving the new clone a new MAC address is the correct thing to do and is not a bug. The renaming of eth0 to eth1 is the behavior of udev, since it believed that there was a new network adapter.