Tag Archives: vmxnet3

CentOS / Redhat / Fedora – VMware VMXNET3 Adapter Not Working

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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

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!)

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).

[box]

yum install nano

[/box]

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);

[box]

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

[/box]

Make sure;

BOOTPROTO=dhcp

ONBOOT=yes

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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VMware ESX – WDS Fails “The network location cannot be reached”

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KB ID 0000308 

Problem

Whilst trying to contact a WDS server from an ESX client machine (though this can happen on a physical machine also). You see the following error,

The network location cannot be reached, For information about network troubleshooting, se Windows Help.

 

Solution

This is because the WindowsPE image you are using to Capture/Deploy does not have the network drivers for the NIC in the machine you are imaging (At time of writing the VMXnet3 driver is NOT in the standard WindowsPE 3.0 image).

1. Get the drivers for the NIC, if they are the VMware VMXnet 3 drivers, you can find them on any guest machine running the VMware tools, (look in Program filesVMwareVMware ToolsDrivers), copy both the folders as indicated below.

2. If you ARE using WDS you will need to right click your boot images and export them.

3. Once you have the drivers and the images – use THIS PROCESS to inject the drivers into the image.

4. Finally in the WDS Administrative console, delete the boot Images and “Re-import” the ones you have just updated with the new drivers.

 

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GNS3 Cannot Connect Network Interfaces when running on VMware vSphere

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KB ID 0000671 

Problem

I have plenty of real ASA firewalls to play with, but it’s getting round to re-certification time, so for ease I thought I’d run up a Virtual ASA on my vSphere 5 box just for testing and breaking.

However no matter what type of Virtual Network adaptor I used (vmxnet3, e1000, etc) I could not connect to the virtual firewall.

Solution

1. Firstly make sure you actually have an IP address in the correct range set on the ASA, and the interface is up.

Note: To connect a virtual ASA to the outside world you need to have a ‘Cloud’, then assign your machines NIC to the cloud. Finally you join the cloud to the ASA with a switch.

2. From my laptop (out on the network), I could not connect to, or ping the ASA 🙁

3. However if you log into your ESX/vCenter Server and change the settings on the virtual switch that the parent VM is attached to. Configuration > Networking > Switch > Properties > vSwitch > Edit > Security Tab > Change Promiscuous Mode to Accept > OK.

4. Now it works!

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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