Network fix for Red Hat 7 (Beta) in VMWare Workstation

Having installed Red Hat 7 into VMWare Workstation 10, I was disappointed I wasn't able to connect to the network. Despite VMWare showing card as connected in the bridge mode, within the guest the was no interface available. On second thought, I should have expected it, since during the initial install anaconda reported "no network connection available".

I googled the problem a lot, and the two prevailing solutions didn't do it for me. One was to re-install VM Tools (which I did - but no improvement). The other involved a spectacularly complex installation of a local repository in order to modify the install - I didn't attempt this, although there were users who said this worked for them. Instead, I tried a more basic solution, admittedly a somewhat hammer approach: beat the installation into accepting the card.

The configuration below assumes your host is connected to the Internet, and somewhere on your LAN there is a DHCP server available.

(1) We need to modify the guest's configuration and pass the e1000 card information into it. We will do this by modifying VM configuration, which should never be done whilst the VM guest is running. So, shut down the VM guest, then edit its .vmx file and append the following line:
 
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

The choice of e1000 as the assignment for the missing Ethernet interface card is just a guess - a decent default to use... Worked for me.

(2) Start the VMWare Red Hat 7 guest.

(3) NetworkManager is useful on laptops, where wireless discovery is needed. Other than that I always disable it (otherwise it is difficult to separate its functionality from the actions of the basic network service). May not be necessary, but always a good thing to do :-)

# systemctl stop NetworkManager
# systemctl disable NetworkManager
# systemctl list-unit-files|grep Network
NetworkManager-dispatcher.service          disabled
NetworkManager-wait-online.service         disabled
NetworkManager.service                     disabled

(4) Identify the name assigned to the Ethernet interface, using ip command

# ip  l l
[...]
2: eno16777736: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP mode DEFAULT qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0c:29:b4:14:9d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff


(5) Configure card script file
 
# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno16777736
DEVICE=eno16777736
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT=yes
IPV6INIT=no
NM_CONTROLLED=no
USERCTL=no
PEERDNS=yes
PEERROUTES=yes

 
(6) Create network script links; start the interface card; enable the network service
 
# chkconfig --level 345 network on
# /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-eth eno16777736
# /etc/init.d/network/start
Starting network (via systemctl)

 
(7) Test with ifconfig, ping and dig

# ifconfig eno16777736
eno16777736: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.108  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe46:dcfd  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:0c:29:46:dc:fd  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 202  bytes 19631 (19.1 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 175  bytes 16269 (15.8 KiB)
        TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

# ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=36.0 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=32.7 ms
^C

# dig www.qa.com
[...]
www.qa.com.        600    IN    A    193.108.37.110