Issues running in OS X 10.11

[loukingjr]

Maybe that means something maybe it doesn't.

It may mean something. Occasionally Macs can end up in a state that a restart fixes the issue. Something to keep in mind as well, as I mentioned I am on the 10.11.1 betas which means, 10.11 has some issues still.

[socratis]

The adapter showed connected but no traffic would go.

Do you mind explaining that a little bit? There are several "links" in the chain of connecting from computer A to computer B, and if one of them is broken, well, the chain does not work.

So, I would start by checking your access-point/router. Does the VM show up as a DHCP-served entity? Usually routers keep a log of who they've served with an address, usually logging both the served IP and the MAC address.

Then, connectivity can mean different things to different people. My mother would mean that she can't read the weather report on her favorite site. To me it means I cannot reach/ping the gateway. So, which one is it? The reason I'm asking is because I've never had any issues at all with any type of guest on my MBP, and it seems kind of weird that you're having all that trouble. Especially only with OSX guests.

One thing that I didn't see in this thread is whether you're using a wired or a wireless connection from your host to your router. Would you mind answering that?

Occasionally Macs can end up in a state that a restart fixes the issue.

Oh, come on, that's not fair! Even my toaster and my alarm-radio needs a reboot from time to time

[loukingjr]

Occasionally Macs can end up in a state that a restart fixes the issue.

Oh, come on, that's not fair! Even my toaster and my alarm-radio needs a reboot from time to time

Exactly. I was just reminding people.
So does my DVR...grrrr

[TVick]

Do you mind explaining that a little bit?

Both the VM and the host have manually configured static addresses. I have no DHCP on this particular section of the LAN.

Initially after setup I would leave the network configuration as DHCP, the adapter would show that a cable is connected and it would attempt to obtain an address but eventually just assign itself a link-local address. Normal behavior I would expect to see. Then I would manually configure the interface and give it an IP address, router, mask, DNS, etc and the connection state would show connected with the usual green light. Historically, on the 10.8.5 host, this is where the machine would crash. When the network connection was connected, the machine would pause for a second and then crash marvelously.

Now, on the 10.11 host, the connection wasn't crashing the machine but rather I had no real network connectivity. I tested this in several ways.

• I used Terminal on the host machine to ping the guest IP address - no connectivity
• I used terminal on a different LAN machine to ping the guest IP address - no connectivity
• I used terminal on a different LAN machine to ping the guest IP address - no connectivity
• I used terminal on the guest to ping the host, the gateway, the DNS servers, Google DNS, etc... - no connectivity
• From a different LAN machine I ran a port scan on the guest and all ports were closed.
• I ran netstat -r on the guest machine and it had no routes except the localhost and loopback addresses.
• I used terminal on the guest to ping the loopback and that was the only one that worked.

I also tried pinging the guest from other LAN machines on separate subnets. In doing so, the router returned "destination host unreachable"

So, this is where I would shutdown the VM, cycle the MAC address of the adapter and restart the VM. Without changing any other settings the network connectivity would work. In the last case, I did not change the MAC address but actually rebooted the whole host machine. Once the VM was restarted the network connectivity was working.

I hope this clarifies.

[TVick]

Alright, for what it's worth, I completely erased the 10.8.5 host machine, upgraded it to OS X 10.11, reinstalled virtual box, imported the guests, and they all started without a hitch. There were no issues starting any machine and none of them crashed. The machine was running 10.8.5 for over three years so it was time for an upgrade anyway. It appears that whatever was causing the issue was likely something on the host machine and not the actual virtual box software or the configuration.

At any rate, I appreciate all the help, I certainly know more than I did before, and all these machines are rock solid. Plus 10.11 does a much better job managing system resources on the hosts and graphics are so much smoother on headless machines.

[loukingjr]

Glad it's working.

[socratis]

The machine was running 10.8.5 for over three years so it was time for an upgrade anyway.

Hey, mine was on 10.6.x for more than 5 years! What do you mean I don't want to upgrade?

Humor aside, I'm glad you got it working. It's kind of obvious that something was messing with the native TCP/IP stack on your Mac and it was interfering with its proper operation.

[loukingjr]

Humor? What humor? j/k