Good Afternoon Everyone,

First off, I apologize if this turns out to be a newbie question. I don't have much experience with Linux and my searches haven't turned up the answer.

I'll be as detailed as possible about how I got to this point so that anyone who wants to can follow along at home.

I've got an ESXi 3.5u3 Server on which I've built a Virtual Machine and installed Ubuntu Server 8.04.4.

During the installation it was unable to detect the virtual NIC so I chose "Do Not Setup Networking" thinking it would be easy to just configure the NIC later after the install of VMWare Tools.

Once installed, I did the following to get VMWare Tools installed:

# cd /mnt
# sudo mkdir cdrom
# sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
(The CD in the virtual drive was the Ubuntu Install CD)
# sudo apt-cdrom add
# sudo apt-get install linux-kernel-headers
# sudo apt-get install build-essential
# sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.24-26-server
(At this point I told ESXi to "Install VMWare Tools" which puts a CD in the virtual CD-Rom containing the VMTools)
# sudo umount /dev/cdrom
# sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
# cd /tmp
# sudo tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-3.5.0-123629.tar.gz
# cd vmware-tools-distrib
# sudo ./vmware-install.pl

At this point I accepted all the default values by pressing enter at each question. I didn't get any errors, and got a message saying something along the lines of "installed for this kernel perfectly". It also told me that to get networking going I should do the following, which I did:

# sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop
# sudo rmmod pcnet32
# sudo rmmod vmxnet
# sudo depmod -a
# sudo modprobe vmxnet
# sudo /etc/init.d/networking start

The first time I did that it said something about not being able to find pcnet32. The second time it didn't complain.

At this point I was hoping I'd have network, but when I run ifconfig it just shows the loopback adapter and nothing else.


So I tried
# sudo ifup eth0

which says "Ignoring unknown interface eth0=eth0".

I found something that said I should edit /etc/network/interfaces , so I did, and I added the following lines

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

saved the file and tried again:

#sudo ifup eth0

at which point it just sits there looking for the DHCP server (which we do have running) and never finds it.

I'm stuck. I *think* the drivers are in there somewhere since the VMWare Tools install seemed to work, I just don't know how to tell it to take those drivers, attach them to eth0, and start the damn thing!

Help!

Jon

I don't use VMWare for my virtual machine, so my answer will not be very specific, but I think you should check if the virtual NIC really exists, before you try to load the drivers and configure it.

Probably there is a way of checking it within VMWare itself (not from guest OS).
When you are sure the VMW created the NIC properly, then try to find it under guest OS - Ubuntu.
Check for presence of (virtual) hardware: see if commands lshw and lspci report any ethernet interface.
Then try to load the driver (sudo modprobe vmxnet), and check if it is loaded properly (lsmod | grep vmxnet).
Then you should have the interface (eth?) and configure it, start with static IP, not DHCP.

Sorry if it is too trivial, but remember, that virtual interface created by VMW must be connected to your real network, so you probably need to create bridge on your host machine, or you will have an "unplugged" network cable! Then check your firewall to pass through the packets from your VM. Note, that you need all these configured to use DHCP from quest OS (that's why try static IP first).