Shiny new VMware kills my eth0!

[redletterrocko]

Wow, I just saw my first little demo of the new VMWare. I haven't used computers in 2 years because I was traveling in third world countries. Now I'm looking at the progress VMware has made. So I installed VMware 5 on my Debian linux system (with kernel 2.6.12.4). I have eth0 as a wired NIC, and my eth1 is my wireless NIC. I went through the scripts on installation, and set it to bridge. However, I hadn't bought a serial number yet (I thought I had 30 days...), and so it just sat there because I couldn't power it on. Because it set up links to vmnet1 for eth0 (and vmnet8 which looks like it goes to eth1, but never makes it), it looks like it's killed my host networking. I renamed /etc/vmware to /etc/vmware.ded and rebooted and everything worked fine. I thought I could have VMWare installed and still use my Linux. I'd only use VMWare for doing certain schoolwork I can't do in Linux, and shouldn't be disturbing my Linux at all. Can someone suggest a good fix for this?

 

[Chacalinc]

does it help?

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_net_configurations_changing_hostadapter.html

I hope so.
Cheers.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[redletterrocko]

That seemed to make me think it helped, but it didn't... I even went and paid for the serial number (that was a big ouch to the wallet). I started installing Windows XP on the machine, and it said something about the processor using a hardware address, and there was a bug reference. However, I then thought, "Shoot, it gives me an address to work my way through it, let's go!" only to realize that indeed my eth interfaces would still continue to lock my system (hard lock, which I have NEVER experienced with Linux...) However, this is what my config-pl says about my network:

. vmnet0 is bridged to eth0
. vmnet1 is bridged to eth1

Great, bridge, but don't kill the interface completely. I want to use both of them at the same time. Can I do that?

 

[redletterrocko]

Chacalinc, out of frustration, I just started playing...and found my answer. I've got WinXP installing as we speak, and I'm also able to use the internet through my host Linux. The solution was that I needed to set up the vmnet0 as a NAT connection, meaning that it must create something of a micro network all inside my system, based on software. Anyway, everything works. The processor error had something to do with PAE, which means that Linux doesn't support it, but WinXP is trying to use it. I just start vmware now with the command:

#vmware -s paevm="true"

...just so everyone knows. *shrug* I wish I could find the configuration file so that I don't have to set that every time. Anyone know where it is?