VMware Fusion annoyances

I’ve been using the latest beta now for a while, and I posted about a issue on the VMware Fusion Beta forums and to this date I still have no solution provided, and it appears no one is really interested.

The issue is, if I install a Debian 4.0 guest, then shut it down and make a copy of it. Then boot the copy, it then prompts you the usual question. I say I copied the guest, it should then regenerate various things in the vmx file. ie. mac addresses etc.

Unfortunately, the copied guest when booted looses networking completely. It was suggested that certain linux operating systems hold the mac address of network interfaces in a file inside the /etc directory structure. Of course said file doesn’t exist in Debian 4.0. Ie. Debian 4.0 doesn’t appear to hold the mac address in a file. So of course the suggestion of the file is not applicable in this situation.

Thus my problem, I am no longer able to copy an existing guest and use it a number of times. Very fustrating to say the least.

Anyone hit this same wall and find a solution? As I have tried editing the vmx config file of the copied guest, only for the system to prompt at the next boot of the guest did I copy or move the guest. So it appears the system still knows it was copied from the original guest system.

Comments

3 responses to “VMware Fusion annoyances”

  1. chesty Avatar

    try ifconfig -a, see if there’s an eth1 rather than eth0

    I have no idea about debian 4.0, but some debians had an /etc/iftab (that’s from memory, ubuntu changed it to some weird udev rule /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules)

    but i guess you’ve rgrep /etc ?

  2. michaelf Avatar

    Debian 4.0 doesn’t use the /etc/iftab, and as near as I could tell nor does Ubuntu 8.04 Server.

    I’ll dig around the udev stuff and see if I can find it. I know a solution is going to exist, it’s just putting the word out and finding a workaround/solution that works.

    Most annoying in the meantime.

    Thanks for the comment.

  3. michaelf Avatar

    It would appear that Debian also uses the udev file as suggested by chesty. you need to edit the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file and then reboot the host. Sure enough networking then comes good.

    Thanks for the heads up chesty. Appreciate it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *