Forgive me everyone, I'm new at GNU/Linux and VMware (other than AIX VM) so I'm probably missing something easy here even after I RTFM. After searching the threads I couldn't find an answer to this issue.

I installed VirtualBox on my XP host.
XP Host: Intel 915Y board, Integrated Intel Pro/100 VE Network
Intel CPU model 630 3.0GHz Intel, 2GB memory

VirtualBox installed fine and the VM window manger works. I created a VM for Mandriva with pretty much the basics since I'm in testdrive mode. I have the iso image on the drive and mounted it as a virtual CD. I chose NAT for the VM interface. Now, here is where I'm a tad confused. There are actually 3 hardware drivers listed in the network choice. I chose the Pro/100 VE as that is the device driver listed in the system. (I tried the others after but it didn't make a difference)

I started the VM with Mandriva One 2008 and it booted from the virtual CD just fine. It comes with KDE and as a SUN/AIX guy I'm used to DT, not the fancy GUI. So I su root and check out the basics like the passwd/shadow/hosts files, etc, and do ifconfig -a. Now the eth0 virtual adapter comes up with 10.0.2.15 and the gateway address is 10.0.2.1(using the dhclient). So I assume the NATing creates a virtual router between my host at 192.168.0.4 and the guest at 10.0.2.15. From what the user manual for VirtualBox says, I should then have a network connection passthrough from the guest to the host through the VirtualBox set up with NAT.

I start Firefox on the guest to test the connection and nothing. Ping works for localhost but can't go outside. DNS should be configured by the dhcp client to use the DNS from the host, correct? I shouldn't have to enter any resolv.conf entries, should I? I didn't see it in the manual.

Did I miss something when I was setting up networking in the VM? It looked pretty straight forward. Any suggestions?

i will be very frank with you i had the same problem with vbox to me its realy not that good
use vmware or vserver depending on what u want to use it for vserver is great for using less cpu power
vmware i dont need to say it tells it all vserver is very good i use it on ma servers as a virtual server
and i havnt had any problems

I gather you did not work it out. Someone must have an answer. Then I'll ask this, what distro should I try next? Is this problem a Mandriva problem or a VirtualBox problem? Since SUN bought Innotek I have some confidence that any problems will be fixed. I should try Sol10x86 and see if it works.

Dunno for sure but looks like a virtualbox problem to me.Can't get much done with a gentoo install networkwise either.I can ssh to the host but I can't ping the host - doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

I did setup nfs between host and guest before (couple of times) and never had problems like now.

OK, I got networking to work. Here's what I did. First, I looked at a 2004 thread regarding Mandrake and VMware. The info in that thread said to use Bridging. So, here's what I did.

Step 1. Created VMhost interface from VirtualBox gui.
Settings->Network->CreateVBexternal interface (VBoxManage tool)
This created a virtual network adapter that XP found and presented in the Networking area. It was configured as "unplugged."

Step 2. Went to the XP host Network manager and selected both the host physical adapter that is connected to my switch AND the virtual network adapter node. ie, <ctrl left mouse>

Step 3. Put cursor over virtual interface and clicked right mouse button. Selected Bridging (only available selection)

Step 4. Waited about one minute until the network node said it had a bridge connection.

Step 5. Tested Firefox browser and it worked.

Now what's interesting here is that I DID NOT select host interface connection type in the VirtualBox settings. I'm still using NAT. So, from what I can see, the NATing allowed the creation of the guest VM adapter eth0 and to allow dhcp to provide all the necessary information, IP/Gateway/subnet/DNS etc. But the VBox does NOT route traffic as it should OOB. So the bridge is the bypass to their virtual router.

I think there is a problem with VirtualBox networking module, but the bridging works. I do notice, however, that there is a substantial latency getting network traffic to the guest Mandriva OS.

I might try a couple other distros, but I think it is solely at the Vbox level.

Some thing is strange there - from looking at the doc's I remebered that I used bridged mode by the book back when all the fancy stuff worked.Now that doesn't exactly work anymore either :-)

I'll work it out one day.Just not today.Or tomorrow.

Hi.

I'm having the same problem on ubuntu hardy.
The only thing I have different is I installed pdnsd to resolve ips in a faster way.

Did you found any solution?

It's a little bit strange, as at work I use Debian Lenny and it works without any problem, pdnsd installed too.

Don't know if it can be due to resolvconf or something like this. (I don't use it at work because I have static ip so I uninstalled it and other network tools).

Thanks in advance,

Víctor

I have not tried it, but this can solve the problem:
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-599163.html

I ran into this problem when setting up ubuntu in virtual box with a slackware host. When you use the NAT networking the vm is set up with DHCP networking and fails to bring over the DNS settings. I got around this by using the gateway and IP that DHCP wants to use for virtual networking: set the guest OS to use static IP networking with the gateway and IP address that virtual networking set up, then set the same DNS IP addresses to the guest OS that are used by the host OS/router. If you have one VM running at a time, you shouldn't run into any conflicts (I have two at a given time with this solution and haven't had any yet). Works like a charm here. I should point out that this would make me uneasy if I were using this for a mission-critical purpose, but then again I would most likely use a bridge or grab a cheap extra NIC and use direct host networking if it were that important.

Good luck!

This can be used and is the better idea so you can have more than one virtual machine working at the same time.

Nat networking:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VirtualBoxNetworking

Bridged networking:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VirtualboxHostNetworkingAndWIFI

Finally I found the solution ;-)