Host Only Networking No Longer Works

[scythemonkey]

Hi I am running Ubuntu 9.04 as a guest of my Vista 32-bit Host in VB 3.0.4.

My troubles all started when I upgraded from 3.0.2 to 3.0.4. The install kept failing with the "setup has ended prematurely" message. When I dug into the logs I found out it was because of a write error on the installation of the usb driver. After cleaning all my files and rebooting a few times, it eventually managed to install 3.0.4.

I started my Ubuntu VM and it booted as normal, but the host only adapter (eth1) was not receiving an ip address. The DHCP server WAS enabled in VirtualBox. Even when I set it statically to 192.168.56.102, I was unable to ping it from the host.

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Pinging 192.168.56.102 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.56.1: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.153.1: Destination net unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.153.1: Destination net unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.153.1: Destination net unreachable.

I thought that maybe something had been corrupted, so I shut down the VM, removed the Host-Only adapter in VBox, and then re-added it. At this point, the VM would no longer boot, saying there was an error "virtualbox failed to open/create the internal network VERR_INTNET_INCOMPATIBLE_TRUNK".

I added a second host-only adapter, and configured the VM to use that adapter, and it was able to boot fine. I then deleted the first host-only adapter as it was no longer in use. A while later, I ran VBoxManage.exe list dhcpservers and saw that TWO dhcp servers were running, even though I only had one host-only adapter. I removed the duplicate dhcpserver.

At this point, still I could not ping my machine. So I tried uninstalling VBox all together, rebooting, then reinstalling. This didn't help.

As part of testing I added a NAT network, a Host-only, and a Bridged network, which is what you see below:

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eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:11:b9:3b  
          inet addr:10.0.2.15  Bcast:10.0.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fe11:b93b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:3300 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2783 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2781474 (2.7 MB)  TX bytes:1052907 (1.0 MB)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0xd020 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:11:19:3e  
          inet addr:192.168.56.101  Bcast:192.168.56.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fe11:193e/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:70 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:78 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:12969 (12.9 KB)  TX bytes:13077 (13.0 KB)

eth5      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:a7:00:a9  
          inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fea7:a9/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:1836 (1.8 KB)
          Interrupt:5 Base address:0xd080 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:644 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:644 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:2063752 (2.0 MB)  TX bytes:2063752 (2.0 MB)

As you can see only eth0 (the NAT) has an IP address. Finally, now as I'm typing I ran dhclient:

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DHCPDISCOVER on pan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPOFFER of 192.168.56.101 from 192.168.56.100
DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.56.101 on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK of 192.168.56.101 from 192.168.56.100
 * Reloading /etc/samba/smb.conf smbd only
   ...done.
bound to 192.168.56.101 -- renewal in 1445 seconds.

All of a sudden (I've been working at this for hours), eth1 (the Host-only) gets an ip address! 192.168.56.101. Although it looks like it took manually running dhclient to get it, for some reason. And I can now ping it from the host machine.

My question is why did this not work for hours (it only suddenly worked as I was typing this post to ask for help, lol)? I've rebooted the VM 15 times, reinstalled VBox, fiddled around with the adapters. My original thought is that something goes terribly wrong during the Windows VBox upgrade install, and buggers all the Vbox drivers subtly.

At any rate, since I made the effort to write this, even though it seems to have resolved itself for now, I may as well post it. Maybe someone else will take heart from knowing that if you just bang your head against something for long enough, eventually you might get your way.

[Perryg]

While I find this interesting, and I am glad you got it to working, I find that if you are upgrading or installing VBox in Windows Vista you need to do so by right clicking the install program and then left clicking on run as admin. The Windows ACU sometimes gets confused with the VBox program. I have no idea why but when all else fails the above procedure works every time. And a reboot of the host even if it is not stated must be done.

[scythemonkey]

I forgot to mention that I had done the run as admin install, a few of the times. I think you are absolutely right in that doing that and ensuring to reboot are crucial to a clean install.

For me my upgrade path will definitely involve an uninstall, a reboot, and an install just to make sure.