Running Ubuntu 7.10 in VMWare Player
October 30th, 2007I wanted to check out the latest Ubuntu release, so I downloaded the following VMWare image:
http://isv-image.ubuntu.com/vmware/Ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.zip
After extracting the 2 files, I opened Ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.vmx in VMWare Player. A dialog appeared asking me if I had moved or copied the image opened, so I selected “I copied it”.
After which, I received an “error” saying something like “This CPU is VT-Capable but VT is not enabled …”. It appears that even though the image I downloaded was for an i386 machine, it was defined as a 64-bit machine in the vmx file. After the OS loaded, I logged in (ubuntu/ubuntu) and did a shutdown:
sudo shutdown -h now
I edited Ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.vmx and changed guestOS = "ubuntu-64" to guestOS = "ubuntu". I reopened the file in VMWare Player and then all was fine…
After logging in again, I discovered that I had no network connectivity. I did an ifconfig and noticed that eth0 was missing. So, I tried a sudo ifup eth0 and got the following error:
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
...
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Bind socket to interface: No such device
Failed to bring up eth0
I did a bunch of Google searches and tried a bunch of different “fixes”, but ended up finding the real problem. [Background]: When VMWare Player starts up, it generates a MAC address as well as an UUID for the system (in the vmx file).
Well, it turns out that in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file, the MAC address that VMWare generated (ethernet0.generatedAddress) was being assigned to eth1 and therefore, the eth0 MAC address was incorrect. So I edited the file and removed the first entry:
# PCI device 0x8086:0x100f (e1000)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}="[bad mac]", NAME="eth0"
Then I edited the line with the correct MAC address and changed eth1 to eth0. I read about some commands to run that would make eth0 start working, but I ended up just restarting the OS. After it came back up…eth0 was alive!!!
Tags: network, ubuntu, vmware player
November 7th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Thanks a lot for the hint with /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules ! I also have the ubuntu-64 line in the vmx but that doesn’t seem to impact things.
The network on the other hand was rather crucial.
Author Comment
Eric MartinNovember 15th, 2007 at 7:20 am
@Emilian - I’m glad the post helped. Do you have a 64bit processor? I was trying this on a 32bit Windows XP system, so that may be why the ubuntu-64 did not work for me. I also think it is an error in the packaging of the files, but I could be wrong
January 9th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Thanks for the hint, I needed to set the /etc/network/interfaces to use eth1 in stead of eth0.. editing the 70-persistent-net.rules didnt stick
January 9th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I had the same issue. I updated /etc/network/interfaces to use eth1 and it worked. Thanks for the post!
February 29th, 2008 at 3:57 am
Thanx Eric,
In my debian Etch installation, the persistent-net rules file had another name, z25_persistent-net.rules, but you hint saved my morning.
Kind regards,
Arjan.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:29 am
I downloaded a third-party virtual appliance and had the exact same problem.
Thank you so much for posting…not being familiar with Ubuntu, this saved me a ton of time!!
Doug
April 6th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Thank heavens for google and eric. I was hitting the identical issue and I’m running on a MacBook pro. This was my first time ever trying to run ubuntu so you can imagine that I was completely at a loss.. thanks!
Author Comment
Eric MartinApril 7th, 2008 at 8:45 am
@All - thanks for posting your feedback…I’m glad to know this post has helped some
April 16th, 2008 at 3:17 am
Thanks. I had been down quite a few rabbit holes b4 I found this post.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:19 am
The MAC address changes when you move or copy the virtual machine. But you can assign a static address . See http://www.vmware.com/support/esx21/doc/esx21admin_MACaddress.html.
Author Comment
Eric MartinApril 30th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
@Patrick - thanks for the tip!
May 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I’m creating a VM appliance based on Ubuntu 8.04. Do you happen to know how to “fix” udev such that whatever ethernet card is found is assigned to eth0, and not eth1 the first time the VM instance is booted after being copied?
I suppose I’ll try just deleting all lines in that file and rebooting. Hopefully that does the trip.