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bridged WiFi adapter - MAC address of guest not what I set?
Posted: 23. Mar 2016, 08:44
by harisund
Windows 8.1 host. VirtualBox 5.0.16.
Any Linux guest.
Single NIC. Bridged to my laptop's WiFi adapter. MAC randomly assigned as 080027A73E7F
In my router (running dnsmasq), MAC 080027A73E7F is set a static DHCP allocation to something.
When I boot my guest up, dnsmasq claims a machine with MAC 10233421.... requested an IP. DNSMASQ then assigns it an IP from its "unknown pool" and my Linux machine gets that IP, instead of the statically allocated IP.
What's going on here? Why isn't my Linux machine reporting the correct MAC to my DHCP server?
Re: bridged WiFi adapter - MAC address of guest not what I s
Posted: 23. Mar 2016, 11:37
by mpack
Well, I'm pretty sure that whatever the reason, it isn't because you have a Windows Host. Moving this topic to "Linux Guests".
Please post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click it in GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (ONLY) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.
It would be good if you included a copy of the ".vbox" file in the zip.
Re: bridged WiFi adapter - MAC address of guest not what I s
Posted: 23. Mar 2016, 12:17
by Martin
The "problem" seems to be that real bridging / promiscous mode doesn't exist in the Wifi specifications.
Vbox works around this limitation in a way which shows the effect you are seeing: Only one MAC address can be active on a Wifi connection (in almost all cases) so you will just see the host Wifi MAC address on your router.
Re: bridged WiFi adapter - MAC address of guest not what I s
Posted: 23. Mar 2016, 22:00
by harisund
mpack wrote:Well, I'm pretty sure that whatever the reason, it isn't because you have a Windows Host. Moving this topic to "Linux Guests".
haha, I am not surprised.
mpack wrote:Please post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click it in GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (ONLY) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.
It would be good if you included a copy of the ".vbox" file in the zip.
Will do.
Martin wrote:The "problem" seems to be that real bridging / promiscous mode doesn't exist in the Wifi specifications.
Vbox works around this limitation in a way which shows the effect you are seeing: Only one MAC address can be active on a Wifi connection (in almost all cases) so you will just see the host Wifi MAC address on your router.
I recall reading about this limitation with Vbox's implementation of WiFi - bridges. However, it's not my host's WiFi MAC that's showing up on my DHCP server. It's something random.
In any case, I will double check.
(And no, I don't see this problem when connecting via a Wired bridge.)