Bridged networking to VirtualBox guest from OS X host

Question

I'm trying to bridge my network connection from my OS X host to my Arch Linux guest. However for some reason the bridge network option in VirtualBox doesn't work for any traffic, yet NAT does. How can I fix it?

Current config:

Host:
en0 static IP
static ip: 199.19.84.xx
mask: 255.255.255.0
router: 199.19.84.1

Guest:

en0 DHCP (tried with static)

Solution

Have you installed all the guest additions for Arch Linux? If yes, then refer the VirtualBox manual page 91 (Bridged Networking):

To enable bridged networking, all you need to do is to open the Settings dialog of a virtual machine, go to the “Network” page and select “Bridged network” in the drop down list for the “Attached to” field.

Have you setup bridged-networking in exact same manner? If yes, then the issue seems somewhere in your host OS. First place to check would be your LAN adapters and firewall settings.

Comments

[rtf]

It sounds like you have a problem in your host OS. What do your interfaces look like there?

[Scott Nicol]

There is no firewall in the way, and there is virtualbox guest additions installed (and appropriate modules are loaded in the kernel). Could it be that the router will only allocate one IP per machine? (current case with data center).

[Prahlad Yeri]

Such a restriction is not there on the router, but it could be in your OSX. Did you verify that apart from bridged-network, at least connectivity is there between your guest and the host? OSX must be having a ping or equivalent command to ping your guest. Also, ping from guest to your host. Apart from there, are you sure OSX doesn't use an iptables kind of port restriction (also holds tru for your linux guest)?

[Scott Nicol]

I was using a static IP provided by the data centre, so the router isn't going to just allocate me one. I resolved this by getting another IP and then setting my guest to static and using the new IP. If the router/gateway cannot provide another address, bridged networking in VBox will fail. < SOLUTION!

[Prahlad Yeri]

Does that mean that you need two virtual NIC cards in the guest - one in the router's range, and another for your static-ip?