Wireless Network in Virtualbox

Question

I just installed my first Ubuntu Server (12.04) instance and immediately ran into the following problems:

• Running apt-get install or update fails (see below)
• Running ifconfig produces peculiar IP addresses starting with 10.x.x.x and my router does not see the server at all in its "Attached Devices" page (its a consumer grade Netgear)

When I run apt-get I get 50+ of the following errors:

Failed to fetch <some-http-url>. Temporary failure resolving <blah>.ubuntu.com

I read up on this error for 12.04, and found some similar posts on this forum and on server fault that recommended going into /etc/resolv.conf and adding an entry:

nameserver 8.8.8.8

To my surprise, I found that /etc/resolv.conf was a symlink pointing to somewhere else and I had to delete it first, then create a new one with the entry indicated above.

I restarted the server and tried running apt-get again, same results.

How do I start diagnosing the problem (I'm a relatively new Linux/Ubuntu user)?

Additional details that may help:

• This is actually a virtual machine running as a VirtualBox guest OS
• The physical host that is running this VM is my laptop which has a wireless connection; I'm wondering if (somehow) the laptop is getting the network wirelessly, but perhaps either the VBox VM and/or the Ubuntu server OS isn't configured for wireless and so nothing is "getting through"?

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

Edit:

Here is a snapshot of my VM's Network settings (only Adapter 1 has any information populating its fields, so I assume my VM has only 1 adapter):

Here is the output when I run ifconfig from the terminal:

And here is the output when I run route from the terminal:

Running ping google.com:

Answer 1

To make it a short answer: It's a network issue.

The way I see the scenario is like this:

Now to correctly see where the problem is, in this case, we need to first check from the outer networks to the inner networks.

1. Make sure the router has internet. You can use the same host or another device connected to it to check this.

2. Make sure the Host has internet via the Router or any other source. To check simply send a ping to google.com for example like so: ping google.com.

If Point 1 and 2 are good (Your router is working great and has internet and your host has internet) then we proceed with the Guest and Virtualbox. It may be good to read how Wireless support is handled in VirtualBox by reading Wifi card on an virtualbox's ubuntu

We need to know the following information first:

• There is no wireless connection inside the virtualbox environment. All "virtual" connections are in reference to cable/wired connected ones. So when you enable a Network card in your virtual guest, it is a virtual wired connection you are creating not a virtual wireless one.

• The virtual connection from Host to Guest is independent of the type of connection your Host is connected to (Physically connected). If the host is connected via a wired or wireless connection, it does not matter or affect the virtual connection made from the Host to Guest because wired and wireless connections are used in the same way inside the Guest. Something similar to the following image:

  

• If your host does not have internet access, your guest will not have it. The same goes that if your host has internet access and your connection from Host to Guest permits sharing the internet, then the guest will most probably have internet also (Default behavior with Virtualbox).

• I will be using Virtualbox 4.1.20 which looks different from the one you are using (Might be same, I do not know). I will add the network image just to help and show the differences:

  

• I will be using Ubuntu 12.04 as host and as Guest (This works the same in 12.10 or 13.04). In cases where Windows is the host you need to make sure the firewall is not blocking a particular port the guest will be using.

• I assume that the Host is not using a proxy, just connected directly to the router via a wireless/wired connection.

• The output from the Guest is the following with ifconfig and route:

  

Now to the points you want to solve:

1. Configure the network for the VM Ubuntu Server
2. Get VM to connect to internet
3. Get router to see the VM

Let me first mention that point 3 will be impossible unless the Virtualbox guess supports port forwarding. Your router will only see transfers made from your Guest as if they were transfers made from the actual Host. So without forwarding (Which is somewhat supported on the latest version) the router will never see the VM, only the Host.

There are of course ways to go around this like telling the host to forward stuff to the guest via the virtualbox engine. Or configuring (Easier I think) the guest for port forward. For example this:

So with this in mind we do the following in the Guest:

1. Test if the guest has Internet access with the common ping google.com approach.

   If ping works then we know that an internet connection exists. The problem might be resolving the destination site.

2. Try the following:

   /etc/init.d/network restart and/or dhclient

3. Verify that /etc/network/interface is correct. My example would be:

   

4. Change the Adapter Type in the Network Options in the Virtualbox Configuration Window.

5. Test out if the Ubuntu Desktop client or another OS works correctly. (Right now I only have the Desktop iso image of 12.10 and 12.04).

Answer 2

This is most definitely a network issue. To confirm that, try first pinging IPs inside your local network:

ping 10.1.1.1

(which is likely to be your router's IP)

and then pinging IPs in the "outside world"

Also, even if you're running your VM on a laptop which connects via wifi, you don't need to configure wifi on the guest machine - VirtualBox emulates a "wired" network adapter, so your guest OS thinks it runs on a machine which is connected to LAN with a cable.

Configuring networking in VirtualBox is a broad topic (although typical setups normally work out of the box), you need to make sure your VM has a network adapter configured in VM's properties etc.

See http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html for more details.

The default VirtualBox setup (NAT) creates a "private" network between your host and guest machines, with the host machine forwarding all traffic coming from the guest machine outside and sending responses back to the guest (similarly to how your router connects your laptop to Internet). The guest does not have an individual IP address in your LAN and can not be accessed from outside your laptop, but you can access Internet from the guest because packets are translated into the LAN by the host machine and then into internet by the router. This explains why you don't see a separate device in your router's settings

Answer 3

Here's what I notice from your question:

1. The message is: "Failed to fetch . Temporary failure resolving <blah>.ubuntu.com"
2. You can reach google.com just fine.

I'd say that there is a problem with the domain name service in resolving that address, not in your computer. There's nothing special about doing a domain lookup as opposed to doing a ping. Your network must be working, however it is configured.

I suggest that you change your software sources to use a different Ubuntu archive, perhaps just archive.ubuntu.com.

Answer 4

/etc/resolv.conf is symlink and will be symlink after you remove it, because resolvconf always resets it.

If you want to use Google DNS, add these lines to your /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head :

nameserver 8.8.8.8   
nameserver 8.8.4.4

If you want to get your router to detect your virtual machine, you should use the "Bridged adapter". In Network adapters, change the box, which says "NAT" to "Bridged adapter". If you set it as bridged adapter, the virtual machine gets IP etc. from DHCP server. If your router doesn't have one or you don't have one in your network, then Virtualmachine cannot get the settings automatically and you must specify them by hand.

I'm not sure about that <blah>.ubuntu.com not resolving, but I would suggest you to try another mirror.

I use mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt, which always contains the nearest possible mirrors. To use it, add these lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise main restricted universe multiverse   
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse   
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-security main restricted universe multiverse   
deb-src mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise main restricted universe multiverse   
deb-src mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse    
deb-src mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-security main restricted universe multiverse

If you want to have backports too, add also these lines:

deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse   
deb-src mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse   

For me http://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt contains:

http://ubuntu.trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/ubuntu/

http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/archive.ubuntu.com/

http://mirrors.nic.funet.fi/ubuntu/

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/

because I am in Finland.

Answer 5

This is what worked for me:

trying to set up wireless did not work
adding network property details on Ubuntu VM and changing on windows the same did no work

though host was wireless, guest (ubuntu VM) acts as if it is connected by virtual cable so following solved the problem:
Ubuntu VM window > Devices > Network > Network Settings ... > check the box for Cable Connected

Answer 6

This link has a tutorial on how to connect to wireless networks using command line: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/wi-fi-command-line.

However, you might want to restore your resolv.conf file.

Answer 7

Ok. A small question! Can you use the Internet on your browser? If yes, try this: Try to change the server selecting update manager, definitions, downloading from, then select a server more near you. and then try to check your updates again.

I think its a bug. Please try and tell me if it works.

Answer 8

I also run ubuntu desktop and server on VirtualBox. And i was having the same issue like you. My workaround was not to set up network card in VirtaulBox as NAT, but as Bridged Adapter.

I hope it help!;)

PS: from the link Serghey posted (VirtualBox manual):

"Bridged networking This is for more advanced networking needs such as network simulations and running servers in a guest. When enabled, VirtualBox connects to one of your installed network cards and exchanges network packets directly, circumventing your host operating system's network stack."

Answer 9

This issue is essentially due to a the allocation of the same IP addresses to both the Host WiFi adapter (by the wifi router's DHCP server) and the Guest interface (by the VirtualBox DHCP server under Nat networking).

From the VirtualBox documentation about the integrated DHCP server Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine:

In NAT mode, the guest network interface is assigned to the IPv4 range 10.0.x.0/24
by default where x corresponds to the instance of the NAT interface +2. So x is 2
when there is only one NAT instance active. In that case the guest is assigned to the 
address 10.0.2.15, the gateway is set to 10.0.2.2 and the name server can be found at
10.0.2.3.

Looking at your host's WiFi adapter's IP address you will find that the address assigned to it is from the 10.0.2.0/24 network range as well.

This is the reason for the issue as now the Nat driver for VirtualBox is confused by the fact that the host and guest addresses are from the same subnet.

To fix this you can change the subnet served out by the VirtualBox DHCP server using the VBoxManage command(while the VM is powered down):

Vboxmanage modifyvm VMName --natnet1 "198.162/16"

And you're good to go(as 198.162.0.0 is almost never used in DHCP servers in SOHO network devices).

Answer 10

You need to install the "VirtualBox Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack".

First, run VBoxManage --version on your ubuntu (I'm on Mint) terminal. Next download the extension pack that aligns to your VBox version from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads.

On VBox, click Ctrl+G ('Preferences') and scroll down to the 'Extension' tab. Click on "Add New Package" then add the downloaded file and let it install.

Try It!