[gentoo-user] Virtualbox - Bridged networking not working with broadcom-sta driver

[gentoo-user] Virtualbox - Bridged networking not working with broadcom-sta driver

[Tommy Bongaerts]

Hi,

I'm running Gentoo on an Acer Travelmate 7750 laptop. This particular
laptop has a Broadcom wireless NIC that only works with the
proprietary Broadcom wl driver as provided by the broadcom-sta ebuild.

Wireless by itself works perfectly fine, but when I use virtualbox
with the virtual NIC bridged to my wlan0 interface, networking in the
guest OS doesn't work properly.

I have made the following observations:

* when the guest OS is configured to use DHCP it doesn't get an IP
   from my DHCP server, but get an autoconfig IP instead
* however, I can see the DHCP requests towards my DHCP server in
   Gentoo when monitoring the wlan0 interface with
     # tcpdump -i wlan0
* when I configure a static IP on the guest OS, I cannot ping from the
   guest to the Gentoo host or my default gateway, but pinging from the
   Gentoo host or my gateway to the guest OS works fine

I manage my wireless NIC through /etc/conf.d/net, using wpa_supplicant
with the wext driver. I also tried using networkmanager, but that gave
the exact same result.

Under Ubuntu 12.04 the network bridge between the vbox NIC and the
wireless NIC works fine. This is also with the proprietary wl driver,
same version and all.

Anyone an idea what might be wrong with my setup?

Best,
Tommy

Re: [gentoo-user] Virtualbox - Bridged networking not working with broadcom-sta driver

[Michael Mol]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 8:45 AM, Tommy Bongaerts
<tommy.bongaerts@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm running Gentoo on an Acer Travelmate 7750 laptop. This particular
> laptop has a Broadcom wireless NIC that only works with the
> proprietary Broadcom wl driver as provided by the broadcom-sta ebuild.
>
> Wireless by itself works perfectly fine, but when I use virtualbox
> with the virtual NIC bridged to my wlan0 interface, networking in the
> guest OS doesn't work properly.
>
> I have made the following observations:
>
> * when the guest OS is configured to use DHCP it doesn't get an IP
>   from my DHCP server, but get an autoconfig IP instead
> * however, I can see the DHCP requests towards my DHCP server in
>   Gentoo when monitoring the wlan0 interface with
>     # tcpdump -i wlan0
> * when I configure a static IP on the guest OS, I cannot ping from the
>   guest to the Gentoo host or my default gateway, but pinging from the
>   Gentoo host or my gateway to the guest OS works fine
>
> I manage my wireless NIC through /etc/conf.d/net, using wpa_supplicant
> with the wext driver. I also tried using networkmanager, but that gave
> the exact same result.
>
> Under Ubuntu 12.04 the network bridge between the vbox NIC and the
> wireless NIC works fine. This is also with the proprietary wl driver,
> same version and all.
>
> Anyone an idea what might be wrong with my setup?

Just guesses:

1) ebroute rules blocking packets?
2) I've heard before that wireless bridging has issues. I can't
explain the discrepancy between your experience on Ubuntu 12.04 and
Gentoo.

What kernel sources package are you using on Gentoo? Which kernel
version are you using on Gentoo and on Ubuntu?


-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Virtualbox - Bridged networking not working with broadcom-sta driver

[Tommy Bongaerts]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 09:42:54AM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 8:45 AM, Tommy Bongaerts
> <tommy.bongaerts@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm running Gentoo on an Acer Travelmate 7750 laptop. This
> > particular laptop has a Broadcom wireless NIC that only works with
> > the proprietary Broadcom wl driver as provided by the broadcom-sta
> > ebuild.
> >
> > Wireless by itself works perfectly fine, but when I use virtualbox
> > with the virtual NIC bridged to my wlan0 interface, networking in
> > the guest OS doesn't work properly.
> >
> > I have made the following observations:
> >
> > * when the guest OS is configured to use DHCP it doesn't get an IP
> >   from my DHCP server, but get an autoconfig IP instead
> > * however, I can see the DHCP requests towards my DHCP server in
> >   Gentoo when monitoring the wlan0 interface with
> >     # tcpdump -i wlan0
> > * when I configure a static IP on the guest OS, I cannot ping from the
> >   guest to the Gentoo host or my default gateway, but pinging from the
> >   Gentoo host or my gateway to the guest OS works fine
> >
> > I manage my wireless NIC through /etc/conf.d/net, using
> > wpa_supplicant with the wext driver. I also tried using
> > networkmanager, but that gave the exact same result.
> >
> > Under Ubuntu 12.04 the network bridge between the vbox NIC and the
> > wireless NIC works fine. This is also with the proprietary wl
> > driver, same version and all.
> >
> > Anyone an idea what might be wrong with my setup?
> 
> Just guesses:
> 
> 1) ebroute rules blocking packets?
> 2) I've heard before that wireless bridging has issues. I can't
> explain the discrepancy between your experience on Ubuntu 12.04 and
> Gentoo.
> 
> What kernel sources package are you using on Gentoo? Which kernel
> version are you using on Gentoo and on Ubuntu?

I have no packet filtering enable on this system at all, so that's not
it.

I have also heard of the bridging issues with wireless interfaces, but
since it works with Ubuntu 12.04 using the same driver I'm pretty sure
this is a config issue.

On Gentoo I'm using gentoo-sources 3.3.8 and 3.4.4, both having the
same issue. The kernel in Ubuntu 12.04 is 3.2.0 I think.

-- 
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software
systems have been designed by committees and built as part of
multipart projects, those software systems that have excited
passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few
designing minds, great designers.  Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula,
the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol,
PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
		-- Fred Brooks

Re: [gentoo-user] Virtualbox - Bridged networking not working with broadcom-sta driver

[Michael Mol]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 10:13 AM, Tommy Bongaerts
<tommy.bongaerts@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 09:42:54AM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 8:45 AM, Tommy Bongaerts
>> <tommy.bongaerts@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I'm running Gentoo on an Acer Travelmate 7750 laptop. This
>> > particular laptop has a Broadcom wireless NIC that only works with
>> > the proprietary Broadcom wl driver as provided by the broadcom-sta
>> > ebuild.
>> >
>> > Wireless by itself works perfectly fine, but when I use virtualbox
>> > with the virtual NIC bridged to my wlan0 interface, networking in
>> > the guest OS doesn't work properly.
>> >
>> > I have made the following observations:
>> >
>> > * when the guest OS is configured to use DHCP it doesn't get an IP
>> >   from my DHCP server, but get an autoconfig IP instead
>> > * however, I can see the DHCP requests towards my DHCP server in
>> >   Gentoo when monitoring the wlan0 interface with
>> >     # tcpdump -i wlan0
>> > * when I configure a static IP on the guest OS, I cannot ping from the
>> >   guest to the Gentoo host or my default gateway, but pinging from the
>> >   Gentoo host or my gateway to the guest OS works fine
>> >
>> > I manage my wireless NIC through /etc/conf.d/net, using
>> > wpa_supplicant with the wext driver. I also tried using
>> > networkmanager, but that gave the exact same result.
>> >
>> > Under Ubuntu 12.04 the network bridge between the vbox NIC and the
>> > wireless NIC works fine. This is also with the proprietary wl
>> > driver, same version and all.
>> >
>> > Anyone an idea what might be wrong with my setup?
>>
>> Just guesses:
>>
>> 1) ebroute rules blocking packets?
>> 2) I've heard before that wireless bridging has issues. I can't
>> explain the discrepancy between your experience on Ubuntu 12.04 and
>> Gentoo.
>>
>> What kernel sources package are you using on Gentoo? Which kernel
>> version are you using on Gentoo and on Ubuntu?
>
> I have no packet filtering enable on this system at all, so that's not
> it.
>
> I have also heard of the bridging issues with wireless interfaces, but
> since it works with Ubuntu 12.04 using the same driver I'm pretty sure
> this is a config issue.
>
> On Gentoo I'm using gentoo-sources 3.3.8 and 3.4.4, both having the
> same issue. The kernel in Ubuntu 12.04 is 3.2.0 I think.

Then I'd guess it comes down to one of these possibilities:

1) Perhaps Ubuntu is enabling something (either a kernel configuration
option or something in sysctl.conf) that you're not, or you're
enabling something they're not. Perhaps it's something that directly
affects ebroute, or perhaps it's something like power management.

Compare sysctl.conf on Ubuntu with the one on your Gentoo system. Also
compare the configs of the running kernel.

2) Perhaps gentoo-sources is applying a patch which causes bridging
with the wireless to break.

Trying kernel-sources may answer this.

3) Perhaps there's been an upstream regression since 3.2.0.

Perhaps using the 3.2 series of gentoo-sources would help you find this.

4) Perhaps Ubuntu is adding a patch which fixes a bug or adds functionality.

Short of looking at each patch Ubuntu's applying, I don't know how
you'd figure this one out.

-- 
:wq