virtualbox.org

So... recently got the urge to load up Virtualbox on my laptop. Been a while since I've ran VirtualBox, but things were usually pretty straight forward...

The UI has definitely changed, so I'm hoping I just missed something easy somewhere...

Basically when I download a distro installation iso, configure the guest VM, and then proceed to run the installer from the iso image... it gets up to the point where it wants to connect to the upstream servers. And then it times out. Pick a different server... still times out. Try again... still times out. Everything is showing as working, so I tried setting up another VM and installing a *different* distro on it. Exact same results.

I've tried 'NAT Network', I've tried 'NAT', and I've tried 'Bridged'. No difference as far as I can tell.

The host is a Dell Chromebook 13, 4GB memory, 128GB SSD, firmware flashed and running GalliumOS (essentially Xubuntu with some tweaks/fixes for the Chromebook hardware). Nothing too radical as far as the software. Been trying to install server images of Debian, Ubuntu and openSUSE into VMs.... but without any way for the guest VMs to reach the (any) network, it's not going very well.

Any help would be much appreciated.

memilanuk wrote:I've tried 'NAT Network', I've tried 'NAT', and I've tried 'Bridged'. No difference as far as I can tell.

"NAT service" needs some setup, see the VirtualBox preferences » Network section.
"Bridged" depends on if it's wired or wireless, on your router, etc.
"NAT" should work right out of the box. So, stick with that.

When your guest boots with "NAT", open a Terminal. The following steps might tell us what's going on. First run the following commands. Output chopped for brevity:

$ ifconfig
enp0s3    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:40:51:1a  
          inet addr:10.0.2.15  Bcast:10.0.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

$ route -n
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0         10.0.2.2        0.0.0.0         UG    100    0        0 enp0s3

$ ping <DefaultGateway>    <-- tests your connectivity
$ ping 8.8.8.8             <-- tests outgoing connectivity
$ ping google.com          <-- tests name resolution

Report any misconfiguration, or any errors from the "ping" commands.

memilanuk wrote:Been trying to install server images of Debian, Ubuntu and openSUSE into VMs.... but without any way for the guest VMs to reach the (any) network, it's not going very well.

You can always bypass the networking portion of the setup. I have yet to see an installer (not netinstall) that required networking for the basic setup.

Turned out an extra reboot of the host 'fixed' everything... go figure.

Marking as [Solved].