cloning virtualbox VMs

[Karl Auer]

Hi There.

I have this odd problem: When I clone a VirtualBox VM, networking will
not work in the clone. Specifically, there is no eth0 device!

Some hints in Google led me to edit the
file /etc/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules to ignore VB
MAC addresses.

Now the eth0 device is always there, but the interface will not get an
address via DHCP. If I give it a static address, restart networking and
wait a minute, the static address, wait a while, the static address
works, and if I then put it back to DHCP, that works too!

The next step was to change the guest from type "Linux 2.6" to "Ubuntu".
Now, mostly, the clones get addresses. But they often don't. Also, they
don't seem to survive the host system sleeping and reawakening, though
the host's networking subsystem recovers just fine. Restarting
networking on the host doesn't work, not does restarting networking on
the guest. Oddly enough, resetting the DHCP server seems (usually) to do
the trick. Note that the original VM, the one that was cloned, *never*
has problems.

I'm stumped. I'd really like my VMs to "just work". I really don't want
to have to separately install each one; I just want to be able to make
one good one and clone it.

Is anyone out there using cloned VirtualBox VMs successfully? If so,
what did you do to make it work?

BTW this is all with VirtualBox 2.1.4, using "host interface" network
adaption.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)

GPG fingerprint: 07F3 1DF9 9D45 8BCD 7DD5 00CE 4A44 6A03 F43A 7DEF
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