Ifconfig does not display network interfaces on Ubuntu 16.04 on VirtualBox

Question

I'm a facing a trouble in Ubuntu 16.04 desktop 64bit on VirtualBox where I can not find network interfaces by using ifconfig.

$ ifconfig

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:160 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:160 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1
          RX bytes:11840 (11.8 KB)  TX bytes:11840 (11.8 KB)

But using ifconfig -a shows enp0s3 (NAT) and enp0s8 (host-only) network adapters. I've edited /etc/network/interfaces and renamed eth0 and eth1 to enp0s3 and enp0s8 which solved the issue.

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug enp0s3 
iface enp0s3 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug enp0s8 
iface enp0s8 inet dhcp

However, in case I want to deploy the image some where else like VMware or KVM still I need to rename the adapters. How can I make it automatic?

Solution

You can disable the use of PredictableNetwork and return to guessing the order of eth adapters by using

ln -s /dev/null /etc/udev/rules.d/80-net-setup-link.rules

This page details how and why these names are used https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/PredictableNetworkInterfaceNames/

Comments

[Amias]

the interfaces should come up automatically if you defined them in the vm settings , you might need to install the vmware guest tools

[encodeflush]

For other VMs (e.g., Ubuntu 14.04) it works fine but in this specific VM it fails.

[Amias]

what is the config for this vm ? and what differs from the working vm ?

[encodeflush]

They have identical config. Still I'm puzzled!