virtual appliance tied to one nic type

[adrianh]

The main thing about bridged mode is that it is not portable. If I make an appliance and it is put on different hardware, what will it do? I'm guessing nothing as it won't know what to do until it is manually fixed, but I would prefer it to be automatic. Another thing about bridged mode is if the network is down, no access to the guest is available from host is available. A host network is a possibility but it lacks a DNS. I have this topic going on here where I was originally concerned about speed, but it turns out that the DNS is more important to me, in which case, the bridged mode isn't going to help either.

Basically, I want it all.


A

[Perryg]

So build them all into the guest.
NAT, Host-Only, Bridged. The end user can then do what they want, or you could program what you want as it is not included in VirtualBox.
The source code is located HERE

[adrianh]

NAT is not useful to my application, the computers on the network need to see the VM. Host-only has no DNS, though I might be able to add one but that adds to the complexity to the install as I will have to have different solutions to different host OSs, and I'm not sure if it will work either. And as I said, bridged is not portable for an appliance plug & play experience.

As for modifying the src... that is a big can of worms that I'm not sure if I wish to open just now.

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[Perryg]

The only way that you will ever get Bridged to work is if you build the code to detect the hosts NIC and appoint it to the guest settings. This is not included in the current code because it is not designed to work that way. Basically you have a choice of whether wire, wifi, or host-only since that is what has been the norm and what almost everyone wants. It simply is not available in the current code.

[adrianh]

Is there a way of getting the names of the physical network devices so that I could bridge them programmaticly?


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[adrianh]

How does VirtualBox get the names it uses for its networks? If I know, I can script it without modifying the base code.


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[adrianh]

By the names it uses for its networks, I mean the device name used by the command:

Code: Select all

vboxmanage modifiyvm --bridgeadapter<1-N> <devicename>

A