No more network in VMs

[GillesNeedsHelp]

Hello all,

I literally spent my whole Sunday trying to fix an issue : my VMs doesn't have network anymore. I tried pretty much everything. Went thru 1008367 and others, reinstalled workstation pro from scratch....
My host Windows 11 (fully patched) definitely have network as I am writing to you know but for whatever reason the VMs cannot access internet anymore. I am using workstation pro 16.2.4 up to date too.
In virtual network editor VMnet0 displays type "custom" when I open it and it doesn't say host connected but as soon as I click change settings and type the admin credentials it displays type bridged. It's like the settings are not in the user space but only in the admin space.
As a result I cannot work as no VM can access internet anymore : this is blocking my professional activity. 
Help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers

Gilles

[enzok2012]

Same issue. I've tried repairing VMW but didn't fix the issue. All the guest vms have their network adapters in a down state. They act as if there's no cable connected.

[GillesNeedsHelp]

I've actually see numerous topics on this online. I spent countless hours trying to fix this and my business have been stuck for 2 days already because of this issue. I bought this software just one year ago and I cannot believe I'll have to pay for a support package to fix a buggy software. I cannot turn my head around this, it is so out of line.

[scott28tt]

Screenshots will help others to help you.

Have you tried changing the VM network connection to a different option?

Does the VM guest OS have an IP address? If so, how does it compare to the IP address of your host OS?

[GillesNeedsHelp]

Hello Scott,

Help appreciated thanks.

Yes I tried pretty much all possible combination for the VM network connection : bridged, NAT, then custom on various VMnet with bridged or NAT. None solved the issue : the guest OS doesn't detect the network card and doesn't have IP even if the interface is connected in VM network settings

VMnet0 is custom type BEFORE I click change settings, I feel like it should have bridged here :

AFTER I click change settings and enter my admin credentials the VMnet0 type changes to bridged but it doesn't say connected to host connection. I tried everything here as well : bridged, NAT, restore defaults... Nothing fix the issue : the guest OS doesn't get a network interface. I uninstalled/reinstalled Workstation pro but didn't fix the issue either.

Inside the guest OS the network settings of the Ubuntu system doesn't have network as if no network card was detected and there is no network logo at the top right when there is actually a connected network card :

Interestingly, at the bottom right the network displays connected :

.

I upgraded Ubuntu 20 LTS to 22.04.1 LTS recently so maybe that's the cause of the issue but is has been working immediately after the upgrade for a little while.

[GillesNeedsHelp]

Hello all,

I still cannot get the network working in the VMs. Strange stuff : bridged network is configured in virtual network editor for VMnet18 but the VM doesn't see it :

[GillesNeedsHelp]

Hello,

Just trying to keep this feed alive : do you need anything else to help me troubleshoot please ?? As of now all my vms lost their network and after days of trials and errors I couldn't get it back functioning...

Best regards

Gilles

[CarltonR]

I've tried to follow all that has been done, which has left my head spinning. Perhaps things may have become overly complicated.

There is one important check that appears to be missing that would help, namely when making all the various changes to VMware settings . . . what is the IP, default router and subnet that is being allocated to the Ubuntu guest VM.  This should be [cleared if required and] checked whenever a change is made.  Also, is the guest VM network NATed or fixed, and what can be pinged and what does a traceroute look like.

Post Edit: Does the issue you are encountering effect VMs setup with NAT Virtual Network Adapter or just the ones configured as 'Bridged'  ?

I would also suggest putting VMnet0 back to the 'factory default' configuration, so that you go back to a known steady state.

As an aside, I notice from the Ubuntu guest VM screen capture, that the proxy is set to manual, what is the configuration ?

[GillesNeedsHelp]

Dear Carlton,

I tried all of that :

- Actually there are no network in the VM : it's like despite I configure a network card VMWARE doesn't apply a network card to the VM and as a result the Ubuntu network dashboard is saying there is no network...

- Neither NAT  not bridge fixes above issue;

- I already tried to reset to default settings : doesn't help;

I think the problem is that without admin right in the network editor it doesn't display the VM0 but it displays it wafter I'm in the network editor with admin rights

Thanks for your time

[RDPetruska]

Well, you DO need to launch the Virtual Network Editor with Admin rights.

[CarltonR]

@GillesNeedsHelp Could you confirm the following:

- that your local network IP address is 192.168.7.xxx ?

- in you post above you noted that you originally had network access on this Linux VM, and for a "little while" after upgrading it, have I read this correctly ?

- What is the network status of your other VMs ?

Could you perform the following:

with the Linux VM powered down, within the Virtual Machine Settings for the VM set the Network Adapter to NAT, power up the VM and login to Linux

then open a command prompt and type ifconfig -a and then ip link show review and note the results.

Request: please just do one thing at a time, in a methodical manner, otherwise it's virtually impossible to determine the progress of each stage of the investigation.

[GillesNeedsHelp]

@RDPetruska : yes I confirm I definitely use admin rights to change network settings. I just highlight the fact that without admin rights (read only view of the network settings) VM0 doesn't appear. So if it doesn't appear without admin right maybe the VMs cannot see VM0 either? Just trying any guess at this point

@carlton :

- Here are my host ethernet adapter settings (private network behind a VPN) :

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.154.1.146
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.154.1.1

- Yes I confirm network access in the VMs was OK with Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS before Ubuntu upgrade to 22.04.1 LTS. Under Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS network in the VMs actually disappeared randomly once in a while but going from NAT to bridged or bridged to NAT did the trick and it finally got going : network appeared back in the VM and it was ok... Since 2 VMs have migrated to 22.04.1 LTS this trick doesn't work anymore and after hours of troubleshooting I couldn't fix it for weeks now 😞

- 2 VMs using 22.04.1 LTS definitively lost network while 2 VMs still using Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS still work : if network disappear I just cycle from NAT to bridged or bridged to NAT and network reappears;

- With the Linux VM powered down, within the Virtual Machine Settings for the VM set the Network Adapter to NAT, power up the VM and login to Linux : DONE

-  ifconfig -a : doesn't exist in the Ubuntu system. 

- ip link show from faulty 22.04.1 LTS

ip link show
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: ens32: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:0c:29:74:82:ae brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
altname enp2s0

-IP LINK SHOW from functionning 20.04.4 LTS :

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: ens32: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:0c:29:74:82:ae brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
altname enp2s0

Please note in order to try to solve this I upgraded to Workstation Technology Preview 22H2 Pro (e.x.p build-20200310)

Screen capture below : 20.04.4 LTS show network connected on top right but on 22.04.1 the network doesn't appear on top right even if the network card appears connect at the bottom right in VMWARE config

Thanks for your time !

[louyo]

PMJI late but something bothers me.

Both of those VMs show the same MAC address:

>>00:0c:29:74:82:ae

If they are on the same subnet, that would conflict. My experience seems to say that the second machine booted up would not connect. 

Lou

[GillesNeedsHelp]

Yes I noticed that as well. I don't know the VMWARE internals but I hope it handles this and distribute different MAC to different VMs...

Please note that even with only one VMs running I cannot connect it to network.

[louyo]

Does the network adapter show up in the removable devices list?

In the VM, run: $ sudo lspci | egrep -i 'network|ethernet'

I get, in a Mint VM:
02:1.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)

This shows what the kernel will see. In the rare case that I couldn't get the NIC to obey, I deleted it from the VM settings. Rebooted with no NIC, shutdown, added it back in and started up. I would do this with all network editor settings back at default.

Lou

I do not run Ubuntu. I run the Debian edition  of Mint (LMDE), so some apples to oranges. 

[louyo]

Make that: sudo lspci | egrep -i 'network|ethernet' 

(the  $ is the command prompt)

[GillesNeedsHelp]

Dear Louyo,

Yes the network adapter does show up in the removable devices list. 

I did as instructed :

- VM stopped : deleted network adapter

- Start without NIC then stopped VM again

- Reset network config to default

- Added network adapter then booted up the VM

- sudo lspci | egrep -i 'network|ethernet' output command at this point :

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)
internet@internet-VM:~$

Please see attached screen capture : network is correctly connected as it displays the icon at the bottom right (circled) but there is no network at the top right (arrow). No network as well in the network panel of the system...

Thanks all for your time fixing this !

[louyo]

OK,  if you have not tried to use a static IP, you might want to  try it. Your initial post showed your VM ethernet adapter as ens33. Mine is the same, make sure yours hasn't changed. You also might want to try on a new VM or a copy of yours just to be safe.

To simulate what you are doing, I went into the control panel on my VM and deleted the ethernet adapter. Again, this is not Ubuntu host or VM.

This process is available on the 'net via duckduckgo, but here is a synopsis:

In network editor, I checked the subnet and gateway for NAT: 192.168.164.0/24 and GW of 192.168.164.2.

Then, I ran ip addr:

2: ens33: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0c:29:2f:08:9b brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

That shows the ens33 adapter.  I then created a netplan yaml. file using nano (use the text editor of your choice).

sudo nano /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml

In that .yaml file, I pasted:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  ethernets:
    ens33: #this should be the name of your Ethernet.
      dhcp4: no
      addresses:
        - 192.168.164.10/24
      gateway4: 192.168.164.2
      nameservers:
        addresses:
          - 8.8.8.8
          - 8.8.4.4

After saving:

sudo netplan apply

Then, I tested.

ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=24.1 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=21.6 ms

then

ping yahoo.com
PING yahoo.com (98.137.11.164) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from media-router-fp73.prod.media.vip.gq1.yahoo.com (98.137.11.164): icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=93.2 ms
64 bytes from media-router-fp73.prod.media.vip.gq1.yahoo.com (98.137.11.164): icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=91.1 ms

Note that I turned off dhcp. I think I got a disconnected notice but then it connected as seen with the ping command.

You could do the same with bridged using your LAN settings, just don't use something in the DHCP range.

Like I said, might be worth a try unless someone comes up with a better solution.

Again, probably want to use a copy of the VM or save it first.

Lou

[CarltonR]

I think that it may be wise to just to take a step back, and to resolve the issue of the duplicate MAC Addresses. Having the same MAC address used across devices on the same subnet will cause all sorts of issues, not only between the devices, but will also affect the border network. As you mentioned earlier, the setup didn’t really work correctly before, and therefore this may just be a continuation.

So would suggest first sorting this out, and then move on from here.

Perform the following:

1. Power off ALL VMs and verify that this is the case.
2. from the Edit virtual machine settings for the Ubunto VM in question, select Network Adapter - Advanced... then press the Generate button.
3. Take note of the assigned MAC Address, and then press OK.
4. Power up the Ubuntu VM, log in, then thoroughly test the network.
5. if all works as expected, then go through 'ii', 'iii', 'iv' for the second Ubuntu VM that was mentioned previously, however, when you get to 'ii' make sure that the MAC Address is unique, if not, then just select the Generate button again.
6. Do this for each of your VMs in turn, but test and check before moving onto the next one.

[GillesNeedsHelp]

Dear CarltonR

So I tried changing the MAC from advanced settings : same = the network appear connected at the bottom right but not at the top right and the network panel in the VM is empty as if network card is disconnected...

Thanks for the try