I wanted to check out the latest Ubuntu release, so I downloaded the following VMWare image:
https://isv-image.ubuntu.com/vmware/Ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.zip
After extracting the 2 files, I opened Ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.vmx in VMWare Player. A dialog appeared asking me if I had moved or copied the image opened, so I selected “I copied it”.
After which, I received an “error” saying something like “This CPU is VT-Capable but VT is not enabled …”. It appears that even though the image I downloaded was for an i386 machine, it was defined as a 64-bit machine in the vmx file. After the OS loaded, I logged in (ubuntu/ubuntu) and did a shutdown:
sudo shutdown -h now
I edited Ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.vmx and changed guestOS = "ubuntu-64" to guestOS = "ubuntu". I reopened the file in VMWare Player and then all was fine…
After logging in again, I discovered that I had no network connectivity. I did an ifconfig and noticed that eth0 was missing. So, I tried a sudo ifup eth0 and got the following error:
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
...
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Bind socket to interface: No such device
Failed to bring up eth0
I did a bunch of Google searches and tried a bunch of different “fixes”, but ended up finding the real problem. [Background]: When VMWare Player starts up, it generates a MAC address as well as an UUID for the system (in the vmx file).
Well, it turns out that in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file, the MAC address that VMWare generated (ethernet0.generatedAddress) was being assigned to eth1 and therefore, the eth0 MAC address was incorrect. So I edited the file and removed the first entry:
# PCI device 0x8086:0x100f (e1000)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}="[bad mac]", NAME="eth0"
Then I edited the line with the correct MAC address and changed eth1 to eth0. I read about some commands to run that would make eth0 start working, but I ended up just restarting the OS. After it came back up…eth0 was alive!!!
Thanks a lot for the hint with /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules ! I also have the ubuntu-64 line in the vmx but that doesn’t seem to impact things.
The network on the other hand was rather crucial.
@Emilian – I’m glad the post helped. Do you have a 64bit processor? I was trying this on a 32bit Windows XP system, so that may be why the ubuntu-64 did not work for me. I also think it is an error in the packaging of the files, but I could be wrong 😉
Thanks for the hint, I needed to set the /etc/network/interfaces to use eth1 in stead of eth0.. editing the 70-persistent-net.rules didnt stick
I had the same issue. I updated /etc/network/interfaces to use eth1 and it worked. Thanks for the post!
Thanx Eric,
In my debian Etch installation, the persistent-net rules file had another name, z25_persistent-net.rules, but you hint saved my morning.
Kind regards,
Arjan.
I downloaded a third-party virtual appliance and had the exact same problem.
Thank you so much for posting…not being familiar with Ubuntu, this saved me a ton of time!!
Doug
Thank heavens for google and eric. I was hitting the identical issue and I’m running on a MacBook pro. This was my first time ever trying to run ubuntu so you can imagine that I was completely at a loss.. thanks!
@All – thanks for posting your feedback…I’m glad to know this post has helped some 😉
Thanks. I had been down quite a few rabbit holes b4 I found this post.
The MAC address changes when you move or copy the virtual machine. But you can assign a static address . See https://www.vmware.com/support/esx21/doc/esx21admin_MACaddress.html.
@Patrick – thanks for the tip!
I’m creating a VM appliance based on Ubuntu 8.04. Do you happen to know how to “fix” udev such that whatever ethernet card is found is assigned to eth0, and not eth1 the first time the VM instance is booted after being copied?
I suppose I’ll try just deleting all lines in that file and rebooting. Hopefully that does the trip.
Thanks for the great fix, saved me a ton of time.
@Jeff McCune – I’m not sure…have you had any luck?
@Eric Hutzelman – glad to have helped 😉
Hey thanks for the TIP this was exactly what i needed to fix the issue of a ubuntu virtual appliance that i converted into ESX. THanks !
This was an annoying issue and I am glad I found this site, I ended up just changing /etc/network/interfaces to use eth3 and now everything is happy again. Thanks!
nice! this fixed my problems! (*bookmarks*)
thanks!
Thanks, it works perfectly!
You’re a life saver! I’ve been searching for hours for this solution. As soon as I made the changes you said, I restarted Ubuntu in Vmware and it got a valid IP address. Thanks!
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Thanks a lot for taking the effort of sharing this! I’m quite the n00b when it comes to *ux so I would have never figured this out myself.
Oh thanks so much, this saved my evening (2am)!
I followed this but left the entry in the original file to eth1 and changed settings in /etc/network/interfaces to eth1 to match. This is the 10th article I read and it got me on the right track. Sweet!
Glad to have helped 😉