Question about networking and Windows

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
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TMDS
Posts: 1
Joined: 25. May 2023, 16:10

Question about networking and Windows

Post by TMDS »

Please help me out with a question...what sort of networking events could cause a program running on a PC to lose connection with and be unable to reconnect to a program running in VirtualBox? Until you login to the PC via TeamViewer and it just starts working again?

Specifically, VirtualBox is configured (via the old Docker-Machine program) with both a NAT adapter and a Host-Only networking interface. The IP used to communicate is assigned to the Host-Only Networking adapter. My understanding is that these should both be entirely local the the PC and unaffected by external networking conditions.

I believe to to be external because, basically, there used to be one PC that exhibited this problem. So we split half the workload to another PC *identically configured*, and the old PC is working fine. It gets the disconnections but without fail recovers. The new PC is exhibiting the behavior of the old PC, where it waits for some kind of user login to recover.

A little bit of network topology here...

Code: Select all

                                         internet
                                                |
                                   ? connected some way...
                                   /                       \
                 managed switch             managed switch
                /              \                          /             \
          PC 1      ethernet device          PC 2             ethernet device
Sometimes communications is interrupted for other programs, or between the PC and the ethernet device. Sometimes it is not.
The primary purpose of the PC is to communicate with that ethernet device. When it was one PC, it was PC1. We added PC2 to troubleshoot it and PC1 started being able to recover from the network issues, with PC2 acting how PC1 used to.

So again specifically, what kind of events could cause a VirtualBox Host-Only connections to stop working? Until a user logs into the PC via TeamViewer? I was thinking maybe some kind of gateway configuration issue or something? Something a managed switch could be doing? This area is not my expertise, so thanks for any pointers!
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Question about networking and Windows

Post by scottgus1 »

There's a lot of room for pebcak errors in networking, but not much along the lines of "start/stop" in Virtualbox, unless a bug has crept in.

For each VM, please provide the following:
  1. Start the VM from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Run the pings and ipconfig/ifconfig/ip-address's requested below, then run untill the disconnect occurs, then run the pings etc again.

    Then shut down the VM from within the VM's OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the VM with the Power Off option set.

    Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show in Explorer/Finder/File Manager. In the "Logs" subfolder, zip the VM's "vbox.log", and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab. (Configure your host OS to show all extensions so you can find the "vbox.log", not "vbox.log.1", etc.)
  2. In the Windows OS, open a Command Prompt and run ipconfig /all. Post the command output.

    In the Linux OS, open a Terminal and run ifconfig or ip address. Post the command output.

    On the host OS, run the appropriate of these commands, and post the output.

    Please label which output comes from which OS.
  3. Ping 8.8.8.8 from each OS. Post the command output. Label which is which.
  4. Right-click each VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show in Explorer/Finder/File Manager. Copy the VM's .vbox file (not the .vbox-prev file) to the desktop (Configure your host OS to show all extensions if the folder that opens does not show a .vbox file). Zip all the .vbox files and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Question about networking and Windows

Post by mpack »

I don't see anything in the posts so far to indicate why we're having this discussion in the "Windows Pre-Releases" forum. Topic moved to "Windows Hosts".
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