Cannot Connect to the Internet inside XenServer VM

linux-networkingnetworkingubuntu-12.04xenxenserver

Recently I've been trying to learn how to use XenServer for another project of mine, whereby I need to be able to programmatically launch and destroy virtual machines from the command line.

As this is primarily a personal project, I haven't been able to purchase any real hardware and so I am currently running XenServer inside Oracle VirtualBox in bridged mode, without HVM, and so I am only able to launch 32-bit Linux VMs (I think).

At present, I run the following commands which execute successfully launching a virtual machine and putting it in the running state:

xe vm-install template=<the_ubuntu_precise_template_32bit> new-name-label=UbuntuVM
sr-uuid=<local_storage_uuid>

xe network-list bridge=xenbr0 --minimal

xe vif-create vm-uuid=<vm_uuid> network-uuid=<network_uuid (previous command output)> mac=random device=0

xe vm-param-set uuid=<vm_uuid>
other-config:install-repository=http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise-updates/

xe vm-start uuid=<vm_uuid>

Once I run these commands there is a brief pause whilst I assume the net installer is downloaded and then the vm goes into running mode. (as is displayed when I run xe vm-list)

Then if I run xe console uuid=<vm_uuid>, I enter into the ubuntu installer, however every time the installer fails.

In the setup, everything seems to be working fine, IPv6 is correctly setup, and I double checked on my router, finding that the VM is correctly registered as a connected device. Then it asks for me to chose a mirror, but upon selection of a mirror, the installer starts 'downloading the release files' and a progress bar begins which shoots from 0% to 100% over the course of a few minutes, returning the error message: BAD MIRROR. I have tried different mirrors, however I found that none worked, and threw the same error.

Finally, I launched into the Shell included in the installer, and ran the following commands to test whether my internet connection worked:

ping 127.0.0.1 = 127.0.0.1 is alive!

ping 192.168.0.31 (the XenServer host) = 192.168.0.31 is alive!

ping 192.168.0.1 (my router) returns nothing however.

ping 8.8.8.8 also returns nothing.

From this is seems that the VM doesn't have access to the internet, and so I believe that there might be some issue with the network I assigned to the VM?

On the XenServer host I ran ifconfig and received the following information:

eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether 08:00:27:6f:51:a0  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 246  bytes 47076 (45.9 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 93  bytes 10473 (10.2 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        loop  txqueuelen 0  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 16  bytes 4602 (4.4 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 16  bytes 4602 (4.4 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

xenbr0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.0.31  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.0.255
        ether 08:00:27:6f:51:a0  txqueuelen 0  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 274  bytes 48924 (47.7 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 121  bytes 13909 (13.5 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

For good measure I also ran netstat -rn on the XenServer host and received the following output:

Kernel IP routing table

Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.0.1     0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0 xenbr0
192.168.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U         0 0          0 xenbr0

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Cheers, Oli

Best Answer

Ok, so it turns out that after a very large faff, you cannot run XenServer in VirtualBox using a Bridged Adapter, and at the same time provide access to VMs. Therefore as a quick fix for this, I resorted to using NAT and port forwarding SSH to my host (my MacBook) so that I was able to connect. I'm not entirely sure as the reason why I wasn't able to run XenServer in Bridged Mode but I guess it has something to do with xenbr0 not being setup correctly and quite frankly for a test machine to see if I am able to launch a VM, I cannot be bothered to reconfigure it, and am unsure whether it is even possible to do so.

So, as a quick fix to all you VirtualBoxers, run XenServer in NAT as it doesn't work in bridged adapter mode.

Hope this helps anyone with a headache,

Oli.

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