No Network Interfaces Other Than lo on Red Hat 6.2

[deuteriumoxide]

After a fresh install of Red Hat 6.2, I couldn't get any of sort of network access in Virtualbox to work (nat, bridged, host-only, etc.).
Whenever I ran ifconfig or ifconfig -a only the lo interface was present and no eth0 was displayed. I also looked in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ for the ifcfg-eth0 file, but the file was not present.
I tried creating the file and rebooting but the vm still lacked any sort of network access. I created the ifcfg-eth0 file by using the following:

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DEVICE="eth0"
HWADDR=08:00:27:8B:72:61 
NM_CONTROLLED="no"
ONBOOT="yes"
BOOTPROTO="dhcp"

.

I obtained the MAC Address by going to Settings -> Network -> Advanced -> Mac Address.
Ideally I want to get NAT Network working but right now I can't get any of the virtual networking modes to work.

VirtualBox Version: 5.2.8 r121009 (Qt5.6.2)
Host: Windows 10 x64 4GB RAM
Guest: Red Hat 6.2 i686 1024 MB RAM (No Guest Additions Installed)

[andyp73]

After a fresh install of Red Hat 6.2,

When you say Red Hat 6.2 do you mean the original Red Hat 6.2 (kernel 2.2.14) from 2000 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 from 2011?

If it is the former then I doubt very much that the E1000 network controller that all your log files seem to show was enabled by default in the kernel. If that is the version you are using then I would suggest switching to one of the AMD PC-Net controllers.

EDIT: Now the brain is a little more caffeinated then the older Red Hat 6.2 probably wasn't i686!

-Andy.

[deuteriumoxide]

First off thank you for answering!

EDIT: Now the brain is a little more caffeinated then the older Red Hat 6.2 probably wasn't i686!

I am actually using the old version of Red Hat 6.2 that came out in 2000. I thought it was i686 because uname -a yields the following:

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Linux localhost.localdomain 2.2.14-5.0 #1 Tue Mar 7 21:07:39 EST 2000 i686 unknown

If it is the former then I doubt very much that the E1000 network controller that all your log files seem to show was enabled by default in the kernel. If that is the version you are using then I would suggest switching to one of the AMD PC-Net controllers.

I tried this suggestion by switching the virtual NIC to PCnet-FAST II and III but I still have the same problem.

[andyp73]

I thought it was i686

It would appear to think it is i686 but I can only find i386 ISOs. Clearly I hadn't drunk enough coffee at that point - where did you get your install media from?

Can you boot the VM and run the following command:

dmesg > dmesg.log

Then we can take a look at what the kernel thinks is going on.

-Andy.

[deuteriumoxide]

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Linux version 2.2.14-5.0 (root@website) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #1 Tue Mar 7 21:07:39 EST 2000
64MB BIGMEM avaliable.
Detected -1894822842 Hz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 4233.63 BogoMIPS
Memory: 1036288k/1048576K avaliable (1060k kernel code, 416k reserved, 10748k data, 64k init, 65536k bigmem)
Dentry hash table entries: 262144 (order 9, 2048k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 524288 (order 8, 1024k)
VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.4.0 initialized
CPU: Intel 00/0e stepping 09
Enabling extended fast FPU save and restore...done.
Not enabling KNI unmasked exception support
Exception 19 error handler not integrated yet
Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... IK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.35a (19990819) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfda26
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hadware
PCI: 00:00 [8086/1237]: Passive release enable (00)
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 524288 bhash 65536)
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd v 1.5
Detected PS/2 Mouse Port.
Serial driver version 4.27 with MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ enabled
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.9)
Real Time Clock Driver v1.09
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096k size
PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 09
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
	ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd000-0xd007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
	ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd008-0xd00f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
hda: VBOX HARDDISK, ATA DISK drive
hdc: VBOX CD-ROM, ATAPI CDROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x3f6 on irq 15
hda: VBOX HARDDISK, 8192MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=1044/255/63
hdc: ATAPI 32X DVD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.56
Floppy0: no floppy controllers found
md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MAX_REAL=12
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
raid5: KNI detected, trying cache-avoiding KNI checksum routine
	pIII_kni	:	5213.223 MB/sec
raid5: MMX detected, trying high-speed MMX checksum routines
	pII_mmx		:	8282.178 MB/sec
	p5_mmx		:	8272.272 MB/sec
	8regs		:	8634.603 MB/sec
	32regs		:	4685.157 MB/sec
using fastest function: pIII_kni (5213.233 MB/sec)
scsi : 0 hosts.
scsi : detected total.
md.c: sizeof(mdp_super_t) = 4096
Paritition check:
 hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 >
autodetecting RAID arrays
autorun ...
... autorun DONE.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 64k freed
Adding Swap: 72252k swap-space (priority -1)

Because I can't install VBoxAdditions since I can't install the Linux kernel "header " files and I can't connect to the machine, I can't copy and paste the text from dmesg.log. Thus I had to type everything out so there may be a few typos.

I used redhat-6.2-i386.iso to install the machine from the redhat archive directory of /pub/redhat/linux/6.2/en/iso/i386/ (I can't post full urls yet since I haven't been a member for a full day)

For those wondering I installed Red Hat 6.2 so that I could run wu-ftpd 2.6.0 and follow a format string vulnerability example.

[andyp73]

Kudos for typing in all of the output from dmesg, that must have taken some effort.

The worrying thing is, it doesn't appear to show the kernel having detected the network hardware so it is more fundamental than a guest networking configuration issue.

I'm a bit pushed on time today but I'll get the same ISO image files downloaded and try to install it and see what happens.

-Andy.

[andyp73]

I have created a new VM for this version of Red Hat 6.2 and used the "Linux 2.2" template which gives the PCnet-FAST III adapter. I changed it from NAT to bridged as that is how I run all my VM guests and did an install from the ISO. The only networking question it seemed to ask during the installation process was to use DHCP or static addressing which I left at the default of DHCP.

When the VM boots at the end of the dmesg output I have:

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... autorun DONE.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 64k freed
Adding Swap: 68504k swap-space (priority -1)
pcnet32.c: PCI bios is present, checking for devices...
PCI Master Bit has not been set. Setting...
Found PCnet/PCI at 0xd020, irq 9.
eth0: PCnet/FAST III 79C973 at 0xd020, 08 00 27 39 87 cd assigned IRQ 9.
pcnet32.c:v1.25kf 26.9.1999 tsbogend@alpha.franken.de

The last five lines of the output are the detection of the network adapter and running ifconfig shows that eth0 has an IP address in the correct range for those given out by the DHCP server.

It looks as though you have your guest setup using the "Red Hat 32bit" template. This may have some impact on other settings within VirtualBox that the very old 2.2.x kernel doesn't like. Can you try creating a new VM using the "Linux 2.2" template and add the existing .vdi file you have and see what happens?

-Andy.

[deuteriumoxide]

Thank you so much! I did as you suggested and now I have network access.