Networking issue Solaris 10 guest

[patyoung13]

All,

I am new to VirtualBox (I have used MS Virtual PC with no issues but it appears more basic of a tool) and am running into a networking issue with my newly installed Solaris 10 guest.

Host OS: Windows 2008 Server (running DNS)
Guest OS: Solaris 10
Router/Gateway: 10.10.150.1
Host OS: 10.10.150.2

I installed VirtualBox 4.1.6 which created a "VirtualBox Host-Only Network" adaptor as:

IP: 192.168.56.1
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
<no gateway assigned>
<no DNS assigned>

I installed the Solaris 10 guest with the following network configuration:

IP: 10.10.150.204
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 10.10.150.1
DNS: 10.10.150.2

Upon boot of the guest Solaris 10 system it shows:

"Failed to configure IPv4 interface(s): e1000g0
"svc:/network/physical: default: Method /lib/svc/method/net-physical" failed with exit 96
svc.smartd network/physical: default misconfigured transitioned to maintenance (see svcs -xv for details)

> svcs -xv
svc:/network/physical: default (physical network addresses)
state: maintenance since <date>
reason: start method exited with $SMF_EXIT_ERR_CONFIG
Impact: 14 dependent services are not running

Since the inability to configure the interface on the guest itself, I set the network manually:

>ifconfig e1000g0 10.10.150.204 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
> edit /etc/resolv.conf
>nameserver 10.10.150.2
> edit /etc/defaultrouter
>10.10.150.1
> route add 10.10.150.1 default
> "add host 10.10.150.1: gateway default: Network unreachable"

This "network unreachable" error occurs if using NAT or Bridged adapter setting. I can ping 10.10.150.1 gateway in either case (NAT or Bridged) returning: 10.101.50.1 is alive.

netstat -rn shows gateway as local IP 10.10.150.204.

DNS seems to be working (to 10.10.150.2) because: ping google.com returns:

ICMP Host Unreachable from gateway machine.domain.com (10.10.150.204) to nuq04s06-in-f17.1e100.net (74.125.224.49)


I apologize if I am not explaining this very clearly. I have searched quite a bit for a resolution but have not found anything yet. Any suggestions on what to try/test/read would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Best regards,

Herb

[patyoung13]

Hi,

I beginning to understand why I have not found much information regarding my Solaris on Virtalbox networking issue. From the lack of response it seems to be a head scratcher ... I'm thinking I may have done something incorrect on the Virtualbox installation and am leaning towards a reinstall.

If anyone has any suggestions otherwise I'd be interested in hearing. I'll post if I find a solution.

Best,

Herb

[tullio]

I have just started Solaris10 and networking works since in the installation phase I said that my system is networked and uses DHCP. Formerly I had used Solaris Express but when I tried to u[grade it to Solaris 11 I found it would not install on my Opteron1210 because "long is not supported". So I tried to go back to Solaris Express but I coud not read the CD. Then I downloaded Solaris10. In a first attempt I said my system was not networked and networking would not even start. So I removed the Virtual Machine and reinstalled it with the newtorkingh option. I advice you to do the same.

[JMaille]

I don't hink your problem was with your VirtualBox install. The problem was probably your answers to the system identification program during the Solaris 10 install in the virtual machine. I wrote a thread titled "Step-by-step Solaris 10 update 9 install with networking" that explains an approach that will work. Solaris 10 update 10 has a few addtional questions during install, but it is essentially the same.

I may be wrong, but your specific problem here appears to me to be a simple network configuration error. Unless you have used VBoxManage commands on your host to change the settings, when you use a NAT configuration, the virtual machine MUST be set up with the following network settings:

IP Address: 10.0.2.15
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 10.0.2.2 (/etc/defaultrouter)
DNS: 10.0.2.3 (/etc/resolv.conf)

So your IP of 10.10.150.204 with a subnet of 255.255.255.0 appears to VirtualBox as being on a different subnet than your router and communication does not go through.
(Some versions of virtual box have had errors with the DNS setting and you may have to put your actual DNS server values in the resolv.conf file also.)

With regards to your attempt to use the Bridged adapter, my guess is that the failure of the configuration of the adapter that resulted in the services being trasitioned to maintenance mode has not been entirely corrected. Services will stay in maintenance mode across reboots so it's possible that even though you "think" you fixed the issue, the services are not enabled. After reconfiguring you may need to try:

svcadm enable svc:/network/physical:default

Also I recommend that you use the Solaris command sys-unconfig to rerun the system identification program rather than editing the files directly -- that's the "Solaris way" at least in Solaris 10 and earlier.

I hope this helps.

[hassan]

HERB

EDIT /etc/nsswitch.conf and add dns as shown below.

hosts: files dns