VM in ESXI can not access internet

[zestefruit]

Hello,

I am trying to learn ESXI so I set up an ESXI inside a VMware Workstation Player, the network is `NAT`

So far I set up a static IP v4 address for ESXI in VmWare Workstation Player, I set it like this

IPV4 Address 192.168.201.3
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Default gateway 192.168.201.2

With this for the DNS

Primary 8.8.8.8
Alternate 4.4.4.4
Hostame localhost

When I do a `ip a` on the host machine, I have this

4: vmnet1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:50:56:c0:00:01 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 172.16.1.1/24 brd 172.16.1.255 scope global vmnet1
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::250:56ff:fec0:1/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
5: vmnet8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:50:56:c0:00:08 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.201.1/24 brd 192.168.201.255 scope global vmnet8
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::250:56ff:fec0:8/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

So far so good, I can access esxi.

Now when I create a vm on ESXI (a debian), they are connected to the `VM Network`, I don't have `DHCP` during the installation of Debian but I guess it's normal.

Later after the installation of Debian, I tried to set up a static ip address in the same range of `192.168.201.0/24`, I can ping the vm from the esxi vm installed in VMware Player. But I can not ping the debian vm installed in esxi from my host and I can not access internet in the debian vm. Also when I set the gateway on the debian vm, I cannot access it so I suppose something is really wrong in the way I configure the static ip address on the debian vm.

Here is my config for the debian vm

cat /etc/network/interfaces
allow-hotplug ens192
iface ens192 inet static
     address 192.168.201.11/24
     gateway 192.168.201.2
ip r
default via 192.168.201.2 dev ens192 onlink
192.168.201.0/24 dev ens192 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.201.11

I don't understand, I guess I probably miss configured something maybe.

Thank you in advance for your help

PS1: The `VM Network` is set with VLAN ID: 0`

PS2: I am running this on Arch Linux and I have this version of the kernel `5.1.5-arch1-2-ARCH`

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

for nested VMs, you may need to allow promiscuous mode for the virtual adapter (NAT = vmnet8)

see example at Using Virtual Network Adapters in Promiscuous Mode on Linux Hosts

André

[zestefruit]

Thanks for your reply, I already did this, I even tried to set promiscuous mode inside the esxi on the vSwitch0 but without success

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

...  I even tried to set promiscuous mode inside the esxi on the vSwitch0 but without success

Just to confirm. Did you do this on vmnet8 too? The example shows vmnet0 (Bridged), but said that you are using NAT.

The point is that the virtual network adapters don't learn MAC addresses, i.e. only know the ones directly logged in, and not the nested ones.

The only virtual adapter that needs to be put in promiscuous mode in this case is host's vmnet8.

I'm not using a Linux host myself, so I'm not sure whether some vmware services need to be restarted after the permission has been modified.

André

[zestefruit]

Yes I did on the interface vmnet8. It was a bit obvious to do it here since that's the interface with this ip 192.168.201.1/24

ls -al /dev/vmnet8                                      
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 119, 8 May 31 09:50 /dev/vmnet8

I used

chmod a+rw /dev/vmnet8

Edit: I also rebooted several times already so the services restarted

I am wondering if I should not try to use chgrp instead or maybe reinstall Vmware Player

[zestefruit]

Yeah I solved it thanks to you, I did something pretty disgusting, I change the owner of the interface, did a down on the interface and restart  vmware-networks.service

It works now thank you so much, awesome :smileygrin: