VMWare Fusion: Bridged Network Using a Bonded NIC

bondingmac-osxvirtualizationvmware-fusion

I'm attempting to set up a virtual machine in VMWare Fusion (2.0.5) but am having issues getting bridged networking to start. Whenever I start a virtual machine that I wish to use bridged networking I am given the following error: "The network bridge device on /dev/vmnet0 is not running".

Running sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMWare\ Fusion/boot.sh --restart does not fix this. An attempt to edit boot.sh to bind to bond0 instead of en0 wasn't successful.

On this server it's currently running Mac OS X Server 10.4.11 but will be updated to Mac OS X Server 10.6 in a couple months.

So, is it possible to use bridged networking with VMWare Fusion on a Mac that has a bonded network link? Is this only a Tiger limitation?

EDIT: Upgrading to Snow Leopard and 2.0.6 had no effect.

Best Answer

Try the Tokamak Networking Scripts for VMware Fusion, they provide advanced networking setup and might possibly do what you're looking for...

WARNING: If you have a Home Directory protected by FileVault, DO NOT INSTALL FROM WITHIN THAT DIRECTORY! It will mess up FileVault (happeend to me once)

EDIT: You might also try this thread on the VMware community forums. An exerpt for you:

After seeing this post by powervm: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/151384?tstart=0

I was able to get bonded nics/link aggregates to work.

edit /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/boot.sh and look for the vmnet-bridge section and edit accordingly.

vmnet-bridge puts itself in background (daemon mode)
Bridge to host network interface 'en0'.
"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 en0
Bridge to host network interface 'en1'
"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet2.pid vmnet2 en1
#"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet3.pid vmnet3 bond0
Bridge to the primary host network interface (which can change over time).
#"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 ''

Edit the vmx file for your virtual machine and change 

ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"
ethernet0.vnet = "/dev/vmnet0"

to

ethernet0.connectionType = "custom"
ethernet0.vnet = "/dev/vmnet0"

make sure fusion isnt running and restart it with

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

Im not certain what speed im getting on the link in the VM, as task manager states it running at 10mb/s as does the driver. But I have network connectivity, which is all I wanted.
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