[Dnsmasq-discuss] Can't make dnsmasq work on a VirtualBox host-only network

[Rance Hall]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Mike Williams <mdub at dogbiscuit.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm attempting to set up a virtualized "farm" of servers under
> VirtualBox. I'll need to create a bunch of VMs, and I don't want to
> have to manually set their hostname and IP address, so a DHCP solution
> is attractive. The DHCP server built into VirtualBox doesn't allow us
> to either (a) dynamically update the DNS, or (b) pre-bind MAC
> addresses to IP addresses, so I've been looking at using dnsmasq.
>

<snip>

>  ...
>
> Unfortunately, the guest never sees the DHCPOFFERs, and eventually
> gives up in disgust. It seems like the DHCPOFFER packets aren't making
> it back onto the host-only network (vboxnet0).
>
> Help! Any ideas how I might get dnsmasq working effectively? Is this
> more likely to be a problem with dnsmasq, or with VirtualBox's
> networking?  How might I debug it further?
>
> --
> cheers,
> Mike Williams
>


Did you remember to shut off the internal vbox dhcp server so that
there wouldnt be conflicts with two dhcp servers for guests?

you can use the command line VBoxManage tool to manage details of VBOX
not in the gui.

the command:

VBoxManage list dhcpservers

will list the internal dhcp servers and tell you if it is enabled.

a similar VBoxManage command will disable it if it is.

This is a really nifty tool, so I'll let you read up on how to use it
to actually disable that dhcpserver which i suspect is running.