Cannot connect to services on the host on Mac OS X

[Robin Green]

I have told VirtualBox to use 192.168.0.0/8 as the NAT network, because 10.0.2.0/8 does not work at all, as it conflicts with Mac OS X's Internet Sharing network.

However, if I try to ssh into the host (which I assume should be reachable via the gateway IP 192.168.0.2 or the DNS server IP 192.168.0.3), it times out. The host firewall is set to allow everything. In particular, NetworkManager picks up a DNS server address of 192.168.0.3, but that doesn't work at all - it just times out. So I have to manually configure the DNS servers.

I cannot work around the issue by using a bridged network, as that is not supported by VirtualBox on Mac OS X. So this problem makes it very inconvenient to share files between host and guest.

[Frank Mehnert]

Updating the firewall rules should not be necessary. Can you post the instructions how you changed the NAT IP range (I want to verify if you did it correctly). Does ping to the 192.168.0.2 work? Do you actually have an ssh server installed on you host?

[Robin Green]

Replying to frank:

Updating the firewall rules should not be necessary. Can you post the instructions how you changed the NAT IP range (I want to verify if you did it correctly).

I ran:

./VBoxManage modifyvm Foresight -nic1 nat
./VBoxManage modifyvm Foresight -natnet1 192.168.0.0/8

I am using VirtualBox OSE by the way.

Does ping to the 192.168.0.2 work?

Yes

Do you actually have an ssh server installed on you host?

Yes, "ssh localhost" on the host works and I can login.

[Frank Mehnert]

Use 192.168.0.0/16 and it will work.

[Robin Green]

Thanks. My mistake. I should have refreshed my memory about CIDR address notation before trying to use it.