Hello all.

I'm running Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-18, and vmware-server 2.0.1.

I'm attempting to setup a virtual linux machine to use a bridged interface rather than NAT or host-only. Both NAT and host-only work just fine. When running vmware-config.pl, I set /dev/vmnet0 to bridge eth0, /dev/vmnet1 to host-only, and /dev/vmnet8 to NAT.

When I run ifconfig -a I see the physical interface (eth0), vmnet1 and vmnet8 both of which are up and have IP addresses assigned to them. I also see other various interfaces that are not relevant here.

In the web console, when I ask that the guest machine's network card be bridged, it states that a bridged setup is "Not available" and shows the disabled device icon. Inside the guest machine, I do have an eth0 interface which I can set to anything I like, however it can't see my external network, or the host.

I do see errors in my vmware/hostd.log which state: "The network bridge on device vmnet0 is not running. The virtual machine will not be able to communicate with the host or with other machines on your network" which confirms the problem.
vmnet-bridge is running, and I see the following in my process table:

/usr/bin/vmnet-bridge -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid -n 0 -i eth0

I confirm that the /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid file is there and that it points to the correct process.

I saw this question relating to Ubuntu 9.04 and bridged interfaces, in which the poster determined that the vsock library was not getting built due to a flaw in the vmware-config.pl script. I applied the patch, reran the script, and confirm that vsock.ko and vsock.o are in my /lib directory structure. vsock does show up in an lsmod.

My /etc/vmware directory has /vmnet1 and /vmnet8 subdirectories. They contain configuration utilities for running DHCP and nat type services as expected. There is no vmnet0 subdirectory. My /etc/vmware/netmap.conf file DOES show entries for vmnet0; both the name and the device as I configured it from the script.

My /dev directory contains devices vmnet0 through vmnet9. They have major device number 119, and minor device numbers 0 through 9. /proc/net/dev shows statistics for vmnet1 and vmnet8, but not vmnet0. I have a /proc/vmnet directory, but it's empty.

When I start or stop the vmware service with /etc/init.d/vmware start, I see the following:

Starting VMware services:
   Virtual machine monitor                                             done
   Virtual machine communication interface                             done
   VM communication interface socket family:                           done
   Virtual ethernet                                                    done
   Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0                                   done
   Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background)                    done
   DHCP server on /dev/vmnet1                                          done
   Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background)                    done
   DHCP server on /dev/vmnet8                                          done
   NAT service on /dev/vmnet8                                          done
   VMware Server Authentication Daemon (background)                    done
   Shared Memory Available                                             done
Starting VMware management services:
   VMware Server Host Agent (background)                               done
   VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access
Starting VMware autostart virtual machines:
   Virtual machines                                                    done

Nothing appears to be wrong there.

What n00b thing am I doing such that vmnet0 and only vmnet0 does not show up in the interface list?