Geekish Stuff

VMWare Fusion Airport Bridged Interface

Date published: 16-Feb-2009
1 min read / 156 words
Author: braceta

Linux
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Today I needed that my bridged interface for my Linux Virtual Machine in VMWare Fusion was bind to the Airport network card instead of the wired ethernet card. I wanted that may wireless hosts could access my VM in the wireless network from other hosts. By the way this was an Ad-Hoc network created with Internet Sharing option in Mac OS X system preferences, so that I can share internet to my home. 

In order to VMWare Fusion start to bind your virtual bridge interfaces you need to edit the file at:

/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/boot.sh

Locate in the file the following code:

# vmnet-bridge puts itself in background (daemon mode)
# Bridge to host network interface 'en0'.
#"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 en0
# Bridge to the primary host network interface (which can change over time).
"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 ''

And change to this:

# vmnet-bridge puts itself in background (daemon mode)
# Bridge to host network interface 'en0'.
"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 en1
# Bridge to the primary host network interface (which can change over time).
# "$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 ''

Notice I've change the en0 interface (the wired NIC) to en1 (the Airport).

Restart VMWare services, including vmnet-bridge by issuing the following command:

sudo /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/boot.sh --restart

Yeahh.. Now my VM discovered an IP address on the wireless network. (DHCP was running on the Airport interface since I was using Internet Sharing in Mac OS X Leopard).