[vbox-dev] tuntap hacks for FreeBSD vbox hosts (bandaid till vbox-net driver...)

[Juergen Lock]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 03:19:36PM -0500, Sean C. Farley wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Aug 2009, Juergen Lock wrote:
> 
> > Hi!
> >
> > After inquiring on the #vbox-dev channel whether the tuntap code could 
> > be resurrected for hosts that don't have vbox net/bridge drivers yet 
> > (like FreeBSD :) I now got it working - except the config gui and 
> > ifup/down scripts, the code for at least the latter seems to have been 
> > ripped out for good indeed...  So for now you have to use VBoxManage 
> > something like this,
> > 	VBoxManage modifyvm <VM name> --nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 tap0
> > and manually configure your tap interface and (optionally) add it to a 
> > bridge before the VM starts.  If you already have setup your host 
> > system to use tuntap networking with qemu you probably can just 
> > chown/chmod /dev/tap0 (or whichever one you use) to 660 root:vboxusers 
> > and then run your /usr/local/etc/qemu-ifup script with the same tap 
> > interface as arg, otherwise do something like...
> > 	kldload if_tap if_bridge
> > 	sysctl net.link.tap.user_open=1
> > 	chown root:vboxusers /dev/tap0
> > 	chmod 660 /dev/tap0
> > 	ifconfig bridge0 create
> > 	ifconfig bridge0 addm <host physical interface>
> > 	ifconfig tap0 <ip> netmask <netmask>
> > 	ifconfig bridge0 addm tap0
> > and then start the guest.  (You'll have to rerun the `ifconfig tap0 
> > ...' each time before you start the guest again.)
> 
> Thank you!  I had started looking at the code to try to figure out why I 
> could not force the use of a tap device via VBoxManage.  This patch 
> works for me with FreeBSD 7-STABLE.
> 
> BTW, you should not need the ifconfig tap0 line above since the VM is 
> getting or setting its own IP.  Is there a reason to do it?
> 
I was about to explain how I needed it for the guest to be able
to talk to the host here, but - turns out this was just due to me
using pf on this box and the rules were a little broken.  So yes it is
not really necessary...

> If you want it to have it look even more authenticate, you can always 
> rename the tap device to vboxnet0 with ifconfig.  :)
> 
 Haha! :)

 Btw, seems my patch has reached its ultimate goal much more quickly
than I expected:  Motivating someone to implement `proper' FreeBSD vbox
net drivers:
	http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-emulation/2009-August/006701.html

 Thank you Fredrik!! :)

	Juergen