Sharing Images - Linux (gentoo) eth0 not working on Macbook Pro

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castle9mm

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Hey all, I'm currently evaluating Parallels for a development enviornment. My ultimate goal is to build a Gentoo based linux HDD image, built with all my dev packages, then let my developers all use the same image to test against, etc.

My issue I'm running into is that I've built a Gentoo 2006.1 virtual device on my Vista laptop. When I give the .hdd file to my designer and he sets up the device using my .hdd file, networking doesn't work.

"doesn't work" is vague so let me elaborate...there is no 'ethX' devices listed with 'ifconfig'. I only see the loopback 'lo' device. No 'eth0' means I can't use DHCP or assign a static address.

Everything I've read says the network card on the macbook pro uses the 'sky2' module for the Marvell based nic. I've manually "modprobe sky2" and even compiled into the kernel and still no eth0 shows up.

When I do an 'lspci' in the virtual device on the mac, it lists the network adapter as a Realtec based card...which is the same make in my laptop I built the image on. This makes me wonder if the .hdd file stores hardware information from the machine that created the .hdd file.

If I create a new image and boot from the gentoo install CD, eth0 shows up and everything works. The problem seems to lie in either the modules that I'm loading or the image file.

So my question is, is it possible to share .hdd between different computers with different OS's?

Anyone have any luck passing around the disk images? If so, can anyone help me out why there's no 'ethX' devices showing on the mac gentoo machine?

Sorry for the long wind...thanks in advance. Great product so far and I hope it'll do what I need. =)
 
You will indeed see the RTL8029 NIC no matter what hardware you're running your Virtual Machine on. The thing is, Parallels Desktop virtualize its own NIC to make the VM independent to the host you run it on. And the NIC is exactly Realtek RTL8029.

So, when moving VM between different hosts, you shouldn't bother about their real NICs - all should work fine without additional configuration.

I have several questions to dig deeper into your problem:
1. Do you provide your designer with both .pvs and .hdd files, or only with .hdd, and the designer creates new VM with existing HDD option?
2. Which networking type do you use? To find it out, go to Devices menu->Network Adapter 1 and see which options are selected and grayed out.
 
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EDIT: SOLVED
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I posted about 15 minutes too soon. I came across a random post about interfaces not showing up with 'ifconfig'. If I run 'ifconfig -a' then I see the macbook interface listed as 'eth1'. This let's me know that the drivers are loading correctly. I assumed 'ifconfig' showed all interfaces regardless and I'm not certain why 'eth1' doesn't list with a normal fconfig. Forcing a "dhcpd eth1", I then recieved an IP address and all is golden. I then copied net.lo to net.eth1 and added it to start up with "rc-update add net.eth1". Now on reboot everything works.
 
Tim Surgent said:
You will indeed see the RTL8029 NIC no matter what hardware you're running your Virtual Machine on. The thing is, Parallels Desktop virtualize its own NIC to make the VM independent to the host you run it on. And the NIC is exactly Realtek RTL8029.

So, when moving VM between different hosts, you shouldn't bother about their real NICs - all should work fine without additional configuration.

I have several questions to dig deeper into your problem:
1. Do you provide your designer with both .pvs and .hdd files, or only with .hdd, and the designer creates new VM with existing HDD option?
2. Which networking type do you use? To find it out, go to Devices menu->Network Adapter 1 and see which options are selected and grayed out.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply Tim. I found my answer and posted it previous however I'll answer for future searchs/troubleshooting.

1. I only provided the .hdd file and had them create new configuration files.
2. The Network Adapter 1 was pointing to 'en0' on the mac. Which is the ethernet card.
 
castle9mm said:
Thanks for the reply Tim. I found my answer and posted it previous however I'll answer for future searchs/troubleshooting.

1. I only provided the .hdd file and had them create new configuration files.
2. The Network Adapter 1 was pointing to 'en0' on the mac. Which is the ethernet card.
Click to expand...

Thank you.

I assume the root of the problem is changed virtual MAC address when VM gets moved from Mac to Mac. As I know, some Linuxes won't renew DHCP lease without forcing in this case.
Anyway, we'll look into the problem deeper.
 
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