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The code that Red Hat Linux uses to discover network interfaces at boot time can produce some difficult to interpret behavior under VMware. Red Hat Linux records the ethernet interface hardware address (also called the MAC address). Every time it sees a new MAC address it moves aside the old network configuration, and creates a new one which completely ignores any network settings previously used , and instead uses DHCP to set the IP address.
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Using the recommended NAT networking setup will hide the effects of this behavior. NAT already uses DHCPutilizes the networking of your host system in a way that is unaffected by changes to the MAC address of the VM guests.
A setup with Bridged networking will appear to stop working. Red Hat Network will tell you that you have updates, but then not give them to you. Attempts to visit a web site will bring you to the MIT Network registration web page.
Any static IP address set, along with name servers will be ignored because the old config has been moved aside. A setup using DHCP will also stop working because the MAC address previously registered is no longer the one you are using.
A clever Linux wizard might delete Deleting the HWADDR entry from the network configuration files hoping the network configuration will stay causes the network interface discovery to behave erratically. At first it seems that network configuration stays the same even if the MAC address changes, but that just causes the failure to happen at a random time in the future, for example after a kernel update that forces device rediscovery.. In fact events like kernel updates force the network device discovery code to run, and then the network configuration changes even though the MAC address has been the same.
Therefore: After you move or clone a Linux VM guest using Bridged networking, you will need to deal with a changed MAC address:
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