- Laptop running VMWare, single Gig-E port on laptop onto LAN/WAN. The usual.
- VMWare setup working fine since forever, VMs bridged to LAN and hence work like an independent network interface with their own MAC/IP etc. Yay.
- Suddenly one day out of the blue the fecking thing only half-works;
- the VM can reach the LAN and internet
- Other boxes on the LAN can reach the VM just fine
- ...but the VM can't ping/etc the host machine, or vice versa.
- W.T.F!? Has worked since forever!
SOLUTION:
Running Wireshark (or similar network sniffer) switches the gig-e interface into promiscuous (i.e. not MAC-filtered) mode, which is all fine and dandy, and when capture stops, as you'd expect, Wireshark switches it off again...
If you run arping from the VM to the host, it fails, but it starts working as soon as you begin packet capture in wireshark - and stops as soon as you stop..
It appears (which is somewhat logical) that VMWare lan bridge stuff requires the i/f in promiscuous mode and Wireshark turning it off at the end of a capture breaks the connectivity from VM to host somehow.
Solution: After using wireshark, in the Windows network adapter panel, disable and re-enable the interface. This resets it back to a fully working (with VMWare) condition.
If that stopped you screaming at your computer - you're welcome!
