# RedHat 9 and VMWare 4 network issue



## rumandcoke

Hi,

I have VMWare 4 setup with a bridged Virtual Network. For some reason RH 9 cannot detect the network link.

I get the following error:
Determining IP information for eth0... failed; no link present. Check cable?

RH 8 or earlier worked fine.

Any ideas?

Thanks,


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## cpuhack.com

I had the same prob with VMWare 4 and RH9...didn't bother to troubleshoot much...I presumed that the manner in which VMWare is emulating hardware is not compatible with RH9 out-of-the-box, or, it's a VMWare bug. Either way, it confirmed for me that Virtual PC is what I want.


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## msteele3

I am having the same problem. I have installed vmware tools. Did you find a fix for this. If so, please post.


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## aineo

This was found at the following two websites:

http://www.vmware.com/support/guestnotes/doc/guestos_redhat90.html 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=100527

Getting a DHCP Address in a Red Hat Linux 9.0 Virtual Machine

When a Red Hat Linux 9.0 guest operating system tries to get a DHCP address, the attempt may fail 
with an error message that states the link is down. On ESX Server, this happens only if you are using the 
vlance driver for your network connection.

To work around this problem, become root (su -) and use a text editor to edit the following files in the 
guest operating system. If only one of these files exist, make the change for that file only.

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth[n]

/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth[n]

In both cases, [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter - for example, eth0.

Add the following section to each of these two files:

check_link_down () {

return 1;

}

Hope this helps!


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## msteele3

Success !!!

Thank you very much aineo!!!!


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## mlcboy01

I have the opposite problem. I've installed W2K as the guest OS under RedHat 9 (2.4.20-8) using VMware workstation 4.5.2, and host-only networking. ifconfig shows the bridge (vmnet8), but vmnet1 is NOT available.

/etc/init.d/vmware start

Starting VMware services:
Virtual machine monitor [ OK ]
Virtual ethernet [ OK ]
Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0 [ OK ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background) [ OK ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background) [ OK ]
NAT service on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]

ifconfig (edited to remove the statistics)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:08:74:E4:74:45
inet addr:192.168.40.34 Bcast:192.168.40.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1

vmnet8 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:08
inet addr:172.16.9.1 Bcast:172.16.9.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

When I start the W2K guest, the error is

cannot get interface flags for vmnet1. Ethernet0 will start disconnected

and IPCONFIG /all shows the cable disconetcted.

Where is the disconnect?


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## aineo

Unfortunately I don't know the answer to this one. I will check around though and see if I can find it out.


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## mlcboy01

aineo said:


> Unfortunately I don't know the answer to this one. I will check around though and see if I can find it out.


Thanks for the follow up.

I took my laptop home to "play with it" there and, when I connected it to my home ISP network (which uses the 10.0.0.0 priv. network) suddently vmnet1 appeared!

The only conclusion I can draw is that, if the actual eth0 interface is configured to draw DHCP in the same range as the requested configuration for vmnet1 (i.e. eth0 draws DHCP from the 192.168.0.0 pool and vmnet1 is configured to belong to that pool statically) it won't appear.

Here is the ifconfig output now (minus stats):

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:08:74:E4:74:45
inet addr:10.15.1.223 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1

vmnet1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:01
inet addr:192.168.2.1 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

vmnet8 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:08
inet addr:172.16.240.1 Bcast:172.16.240.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

Interesting, isn't it?

I was unable to find any reference to this in the docs for vmware. I hope to GOD it isn't there!

Thanks again aineo!


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## markros

(self confessed linux newbie)

the code only works if you put it in the appropriate (redhat 9) file --

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions

at the top of the check_link_down() function add

return 1

then issue the command

service network restart

... worked for me


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## veresch

aineo said:


> This was found at the following two websites:
> 
> Getting a DHCP Address in a Red Hat Linux 9.0 Virtual Machine
> 
> When a Red Hat Linux 9.0 guest operating system tries to get a DHCP address, the attempt may fail
> with an error message that states the link is down. On ESX Server, this happens only if you are using the
> vlance driver for your network connection.
> 
> To work around this problem, become root (su -) and use a text editor to edit the following files in the
> guest operating system. If only one of these files exist, make the change for that file only.
> 
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth[n]
> 
> /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth[n]
> 
> In both cases, [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter - for example, eth0.
> 
> Add the following section to each of these two files:
> 
> check_link_down () {
> 
> return 1;
> 
> }
> 
> Hope this helps!


This worked like a charm! Thank you! I spent so much time trying to figure this problem out!

-Alexi


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