virtualbox.org

I've spent the last few hours searching through all the threads on enabling Wireless within Ubuntu (Guest) on Vista (Host) and it seems everyone has a mixed opinion on how this should work. Some believe it's only possible with a USB wireless adaptor (http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... ess#p88932) others suggest it works via bridging (http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... ess#p84009) and then there are other topics that talk about the constraints between host-only and virtual (http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16396)

My machine is a Lenovo X301 with an Intel Wifi 5300 card and I'm running VirtualBox 3.0.2 on Vista with Ubuntu (Back Track 4 Pre Final) as the guest. I'm trying to setup my wireless card to work within Ubuntu so I can search for and connect to wireless networks.

I have configured the VB to use my Intel Wifi 5300 as a second network adapter in bridged mode as per the screenshot below;



However when I launch the VB, it only shows two wired interfaces (eth0 and eth1) via ifconfig and iwconfig reports there are no wireless extensions present. It's also worht mentioning lspci returns two entries with Ethernet controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE].

Can someone please explain what I am missing here? I was of the opinion these drivers were present in this build and already compiled within the kernel so what else is there to configure?

The guest CANNOT see your physical hardware, unless, as pointed in some of the threads you read, it is an USB thing, and you attach it to the VM.

When you create a bridget network you are not giving ubuntu access to your hardware, you are just saying the the Virtual Ethernet Adapter (Ethernet controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE]) should send its packets throu this interface. This is only a logical thing.
What you want WILL NOT WORK on any current virtualization software.

Hope this helps.

MKhaos7 wrote:The guest CANNOT see your physical hardware, unless, as pointed in some of the threads you read, it is an USB thing, and you attach it to the VM.

When you create a bridget network you are not giving ubuntu access to your hardware, you are just saying the the Virtual Ethernet Adapter (Ethernet controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE]) should send its packets throu this interface. This is only a logical thing.
What you want WILL NOT WORK on any current virtualization software.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the clarification.

So based on your response, I would've thought you could assign a wireless extension to one of the network interfaces (eth1) and have the packets 'pass through' to the hardware (in this case a wireless card) on your guest for command and control?

Not really, since VirtualBox only supports working with TCP/IP and not with 802.11 (the wireless standard). IF they added support for it maybe it could work as you wanted, but for now this is not an option.