VirtualBox 4.0.8, pfSense 2.0-RC3 and WiFi bridging.

jptech

I've was testing out RC3 on VirtualBox today and am having some trouble bridging two interfaces together. I followed these instructions:

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,20917.0.html

It works for me when I use a physical machine, but when I try to do the same on my VirtualBox install it doesn't work. Devices connected to the bridged interfaces can get a DHCP assigned IP, but all other traffic gets dropped silently. I tried setting my virtual network cards to use promiscuous mode..

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=41036&start=0

..but it didn't help. I can make it work another way, but would appreciate some feedback about how I've done it. This is not a mission critical machine and I mainly want to move it onto my virtual machine server so I can get rid of the old dedicated hardware I've been using. Here is my setup:

I have 3 NICs in my host machine:

eth0 - connected to my LAN
eth1 - connected to my WAN (ISP)
wlan0 - atheros based wireless card (AR2413 using ath5k driver)

None of the above are assigned IP addresses. On my host machine I'm using 'hostapd' and configuring my wireless card as a wireless access point. I installed 'bridge-utils' and used it to create a new interface:

br0 - bridges wlan0 and eth0 (LAN and WIFI)
virtual NIC em0 - bridged to eth1 - assigned to WAN
virtual NIC em1 - bridged to br0 - assigned to LAN

So, my question is.. if I bridge those NICs on the host and let my pfSense virtual machine treat them like a single interface, am I going to break anything non-obvious? I know I won't be able to filter the bridged traffic, but I don't want to anyway. So far it seems to be working pretty decently.

illern

Hello!

I had the same problem this week.
It´s not PfSense fault.

Virtualbox has made changes in v4.0.6
Check this link out, you have to set promiscuos mode for the PfSense internal nics.
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=41036#p184544

This is what I did for my LAN and OPT interface. My 3 nics are Intel E1000 nics.
Command:
(VBoxManage setextradata [VM_NAME] "VBoxInternal/Devices/[e1000/pcnet]]/[slot]/LUN#0/Config/IfPolicyPromisc" "allow-all")
For ex:
VBoxManage setextradata VM_namehere "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/1/LUN#0/Config/IfPolicyPromisc" "allow-all"
VBoxManage setextradata VM_namehere "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/2/LUN#0/Config/IfPolicyPromisc" "allow-all"

Then it worked for me.

/illern