5. VMWare and Token Ring

Thanks to Scott Russell scottrus@raleigh.ibm.com for this little "trick"

One of the bummers about VMWare is if you are on a Token-Ring adapter, your VMWare system can't have a real TCP/IP address. Turns out this isn't the case. Here's how to do it.

• In the info below we'll call your linux box 'linux.mycompany.biz.com'

• Register another ip address, I'll call it 'vmware.mycompany.biz.com'

• Make sure FORWARD_IPV4=true in your /etc/sysconfig/network file. If you have to change it you can dynamically turn on the feature as root

  cat 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

• Alias the second ip to the TR adapter. You end up with something like this from /sbin/ifconfig:

  tr0 linux.mycompany.biz.com tr0:0 vmware.mycompany.biz.com vmnet1 192.168.0.1

• Make sure you can ping both ip addresses from another box. If you cannot then this next step will not work.

• Use ipchains/iptables to redirect incoming traffic for the tr0:0 interface to your vmnet1 interface. (When I did this I only redirected specific ports from tr0:0 to vmnet1.)

Now any outside system your 'NT' box appears to be on the TR. In bound traffic can find it as well as out.