# VMware bridged networking not working

## Edweirdo

I have VMware workstation and VMware Server installed on a few different computers (1 workstation, 3 servers) and it seems that recently my bridged networking stopped working.  I'm not sure what got updated because it seems that whatever the change was didn't take affect until I rebooted the systems.

The problem is that NAT works fine.  Bridged almost works.  When a VM is set up for bridged networking and I try to navigate to a web site the dns look up is performed and then the browser says it contacted the site but I never get a response.

My workstation is unstable buy my servers are stable.  They are all up to date.  Some of the servers are running kernel-2.6.19-gentoo-r5 and some are on kernel-2.6.20-gentoo-r8.  The unstable workstation is on 2.6.21-gentoo-r3.

VMware-server 1.0.3.

VMware-workstation 5.5.4

Any thoughts or help would be appreciated.

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## Spectre256

This sounds like a simple network configuration issue on the virtual host behind the bridged network. I would check the fairly obvious things: make sure it has a valid IP address, DNS server address, and default route. Also try connecting to computers by IP address or to local machines to help narrow down the cause.

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## h0mer`-

The reason could be that your network interface is eth1 and not eth0 when you launch your image in bridged mode.

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## Edweirdo

One server is using eth1 (which is the interface connected to the network) but another is using eth0 (which is the interface connected to the network).  I tried using an ip address in my browser using bridged and that doesn't seem to work either.  I can ping an IP address, though.

(My favorite trouble shooting quote:) Everything was configured and working until it stopped working.  I didn't change any configurations before it stopped working.  Of course, I changed things, I update my system everyday.  I'm sure something minor changed and I just didn't notice.

I re-emerged vmware-modules and reconfigured vmware (with vmware-config.pl) but nothing seems to have an affect.

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## Edweirdo

I added the useflag -ipv6 and did a newuse emerge but that didn't help.  I checked to make sure ipv6 was off in the kernel and it is.  I installed the real VMware-server (not the ebuild) using the newest vmware-any-any (110) and it still didn't fix anything.

Looks like I'm going to have to install Red Hat (yuk).

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## Edweirdo

Red Hat works.  Ubuntu works.  Gentoo does not work.

I don't want to use Red Hat.  I don't want to use Ubuntu.  I want to use Gentoo.

Doesn't anyone have any ideas?

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## euphorium

In case this helps anyone.

I ran into this problem when I migrated a web server image to a windows server. I came here looking for a solution and realized that the forementioned statement about using eth1 was the issue I had here with the bridge.  

My Solution

```

cd /etc/init.d/

ln -s net.eth0 net.eth1

rc-update add net.eth1 default

/etc/init.d/net.eth1 start

```

Then I restarted each web service one by one to bring them back up for migration to production levels.

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