CentOS / Redhat / Fedora – VMware VMXNET3 Adapter Not Working

KB ID 0001329 

Problem

This has tripped me up a couple of times, and if you Google the problem, you find a load of posts saying ‘Just install VMware tools that will fix the problem’

It Wont!

And I’ll tell you why, run ifconfig

ifconfig VMXNET3 VMware

You will notice you have a network card, but you will also notice that it’s got a strange name ‘ens160’ not eth0 as you would normally expect? Anyway let’s prove it’s not a driver issue by issuing a dhclient -v command. This basically forces the NIC up and makes it get a DHCP address, (assuming your NIC is connected to the correct network, and you have DHCP running of course!)

Linux Force DHCP Request

So this tells me it’s not a driver issue, and that installing VMware tools probably wont cure the problem.

It Didn’t!

Also if you reboot, you will find it’s not working again!

Solution

I’m going to use nano in a minute, (other editors are available), so I’ll install that first. (I’m logged in as root, you may need to prefix the following command with sudo if you are not).

yum install nano

Linux Install nano

Remember my network card had a ‘funny name’, well change directory to the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory, and you will see it’s config file, so let’s edit that, (change the text in red, to reflect your interface name, from the ifconfig command earlier);

cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
nano ifconfig-ens160

Edit VMXNet3 Interface Linux

Make sure;

BOOTPROTO=dhcp

ONBOOT=yes

VMXNet3 Enable DHCP

Now if you reboot your VM, it should come back up with networking enabled.

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Author: PeteLong

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