Networks and Remotes > Media Network

Problems seeing MC servers on your LAN? (VirtualBox problem and the solution)

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bob:
We ran into this interesting problem.

Several of us are running VirtualBox on our PC's for testing. For some reason, MC in the host machine (not container) wasn't showing up on the LAN as a library server or as DLNA device.

The problem turned out to be rather esoteric. VirtualBox (as well as vmware) creates a virtual interface on your PC that shows up as an unidentified network. According to what we found, that means that when it's active (which is is by default) you have a public network firewall in Vista and Win7 (this blocks MC and other stuff by default).

I stumbled across this trying to debug the problem by disabling the VirtualBox adapter and restarting MC at which point Windows 7 popped up an unblock window!

Ran into a few references to fixing this on the net and figured they would be useful.

For VirtualBox: http://www.brokenwire.net/bw/Various/120/fix-virtualbox-causes-unidentified-network-on-vista-and-windows-7
For VMWare: http://aspoc.net/archives/2008/10/30/unidentified-network-issue-with-vmwares-virtual-nics-in-vista/

It appears that this would also apply if you have actual physical NICS and may apply with vlans.

petrossa:
It's always advisable with VirtualBox to not install host/bridged network adapters if you don't use them. They bite other programs too. Just untick them in the setup. If you have them already installed rerunning the installer and then unticking them will uninstall the adapters.

bob:

--- Quote from: petrossa on November 03, 2012, 02:36:30 pm ---It's always advisable with VirtualBox to not install host/bridged network adapters if you don't use them. They bite other programs too. Just untick them in the setup. If you have them already installed rerunning the installer and then unticking them will uninstall the adapters.

--- End quote ---
True but in our case, we need the bridged adapter for our guest bottle because that's where MC for testing resides and we need to see it on the LAN (as well as the one on the host OS).

newsposter:
It's a vlan issue.  VirtualBox creates in effect, a vlan before the virtual nic is passed to a VM *and* at the same mis-identifying the new virtual nic to the registry in the guest windows OS as well as in the host OS.  I'm having the same problem at work with multiple Server 2010/2012 instances running on a single host machine.

Something changed in the past two iterations of VB.  There are user complaints and problems all over their boards with no real workarounds.

newsposter:
This topic re-started my curiosity on this.  Been working with setting up a custom configured internal network with the options available via vboxmanage.  Still going to need at least a rudimentary DNS, thinking that using DHCP reservations and setting custom MAC addresses for each VM would be the way to go.  Not too worried about swizzling custom MACs, there are plenty of prefixes from defunct card makers that can be used.

Section 8.8.2 in the current VBox manual is our starting point for all this.

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