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I have a MacOS X Mavericks host running Vagrant using VirtualBox as a provider. I have experienced several times that with different VMs (particularly Ubuntu Linux VMs) after the first time the VM is brought up host-only networking will not work.

Most recently I was running a Vagrant avenuefactory/wordpress VM. It was configured to have two adaptors #1 NAT and #2 Host-only 192.168.10.10/24. The VM brings up WordPress when started. Very nice except the Mac cannot see it until after I restart the whole machine. Both sides see the 192.168.10.0/24 network. Neither side can ping the other. ifconfig on both sides shows the shared network interface vboxnet0. From either side pings result in timeouts.

On the host I have tried the following:

  • Restarting each VM and VirtualBox.
  • ifconfig <interface> down followed by ifconfig <interface> up for all IP interfaces.
  • scutil -r 192.168.10.10 says the host is reachable. This is true but not useful.
  • route add 192.168.10.10 192.168.10.1 -iface vboxnet0 adds a route successfully
  • killall -HUP configd (manually sending a Hangup interrupt to the configd process to reset the network (and just about everything else) does nothing.
  • logging out and back in the user does nothing.
  • restarting the whole machine works every time, and then it's like nothing has changed but now it suddenly works. But the next time I start up a new VM, or when I quit VirtualBox and restart all the VMs, or just randomly, this situation can recur.

On the host:

# ifconfig vboxnet0 vboxnet0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether 0a:00:27:00:00:00 inet 192.168.10.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.10.255 # scutil -r 192.168.10.10 Reachable # ping 192.168.10.10 PING 192.168.10.10 (192.168.10.10): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 ... # route add 192.168.10.10 192.168.10.1 add host 192.168.10.10: gateway 192.168.10.1 # ping 192.168.10.10 PING 192.168.10.10 (192.168.10.10): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 ... # ifconfig vboxnet0 down # ifconfig vboxnet0 up # ping 192.168.10.10 PING 192.168.10.10 (192.168.10.10): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 ... # VBoxManage dhcpserver remove --ifname vboxnet0 # VBoxManage dhcpserver add --ifname vboxnet0 --ip 192.168.10.10 --netmask 255.255.255.0 --lowerip 192.168.10.2 --upperip 192.168.10.254 --enable PING 192.168.10.10 (192.168.10.10): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 ... # arp -s 192.168.10.10 08:00:27:e2:2f:1c

...and the chorus continues. So then on the ubuntu guest: 

# arp -s 192.168.56.1 0a:00:27:00:00:00

...and still nothing.

I followed advice found at https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=63998# but still have the problem. I cannot believe that I have to completely restart my Mac every time this problem happens (at random). Can anybody think of some less draconian than a restart to solve this?

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  • I had the same problem, but for some reason, if I enable the dhcp settings for vboxnet0, then all host adapters are working. I have configured all 4 host adapters, but only when I enable dhcp on vboxnet0, i see the host adapters and VMs on the guest are pingable. Thanks Dinesh Commented Sep 21, 2016 at 10:38

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This appears to work:

# VBoxManage hostonlyif remove vboxnet0

This removes the host-only network. Then restarting VirtualBox brought the interface back and it works. For now. Honestly, I don't know if I've actually found the solution or if it's just dumb luck and it will stop working in a few minutes.

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