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Barry Rountree edited this page Apr 21, 2020 · 1 revision

Host-side VirtualBox Setup

VirtualBox allows several different kinds of networking. NAT is the default, which allows the VM to reach the internet but does not allow the host to ssh into the vm without using port forwarding. To give our VMs a static IP address, we add on Host-Only networking. The first step in doing so is setting up a loopback device on the host machine. Using the GUI, that procedure looks like this.

Here is what the VirtualBox Manager looks like when started for the first time.

Screenshots/VirtualBoxManager_Initial.png

Use CTRL+H (or File->Host Network Manager) to bring up this window. (Note the VirtualBox documentation describes an older interface that no longer exists.)

Screenshots/HostNetworkManager_Initial.png

Click on Create. That gives us a host-side network device with the name vboxnet0.

Screenshots/HostNetworkManager_PostCreate.png

Click on Properties. The DHCP Server should NOT be enabled. Note that the field "IPv4 Address" (192.168.56.1) describes the address of the host machine as seen from the VM. This address will be shared across all VMs.

Screenshots/HostNetworkManager_Properties.png

Click on Apply (if needed) and then Close. Running ip address on the command line at this point on the host should give something like:

rountree@Solvent:/$ ip address
...
9: vboxnet0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 0a:00:27:00:00:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
rountree@Solvent:/$

Note that the link is currently down.

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