Hello everyone, I have the following problem and can’t find a solution. I hope you can help me:
I created a Windows 11 VM in VirtualBox on my old system (Manjaro Linux), exported it, and imported it to my new system (Fedora). The VM runs fine, but I no longer get a network connection, neither through NAT nor via a network bridge. The connection via the Wifi network bridge is essential for me.
Thank you very much for your help.
Hi, do you have the virtualbox extension package installed on the host system? From what I remember, this is required for bridged networking (though NAT should work without it).
Does bridging the ethernet port work for you?
Have you tried to generate a new MAC address? Activate / deactivate the network interface in you Win guest to renew the IP lease…? Sorry, just guesses.
Thank you for your response, yes, I have already tested all these things. I also tried switching the firewall backend from nftables to iptables, unfortunately without success.
Can you switch over your vm to virt-boxes?
Do you mean virtmanager or Gnome-Boxes? I think there is no possibility for bridged networks over wifi!?
You’re welcome! I’ll take a closer look at it later. I just tested it on openSUSE Tumbleweed, and my VM works just like on Manjaro. VirtualBox 7.1.6 is installed on all systems. So, I think it’s an issue with Fedora.
The ability to run virtual machine networks in bridge mode on wireless is hardware dependent. Some will do and some will not. I have one really old Dell that will run bridge mode all of the newer laptops I have will not. I have found that your odds are better with VirtualBox as it uses a network shim for the stack that will allow bridged when the hardware supports it.
It sounds like you have three different distributions on three different hardware. What is the wireless hardware you have across all of the systems? Can you move the wireless hardware that works into the Fedora system and test? Then you are only changing one thing.
Apologies for the confusion. I installed all three distributions on the same hardware (ThinkPad T480) for testing purposes. On this device, the Wi-Fi bridge has always worked reliably across various setups. However, based on current observations, the issue appears to be kernel-related. Specifically, kernel 6.14 breaks functionality that was previously working under kernel 6.12 (Manjaro) and 6.13 (openSUSE Tumbleweed). With 6.14, the Wi-Fi bridge fails to function on all tested distributions. Additionally, Bluetooth pairing with the Logitech MX Master 3 no longer works under this kernel version, indicating broader regression in wireless subsystem support.
OK, that makes more sense. Also makes sense that it would be related to the kernel or the firmware package that goes with them. I also have a T480, but I don’t think I ever tried bridged over wireless with it. I think I had used the physical port on it.
Would you be able to test on your hardware to determine if kernel 6.14 causes the same Bluetooth connectivity issues and/or problems with VirtualBox functionality?
Yea, I can dig it out. I will be later this evening or tomorrow morning if you can wait. Do you want me to test the ability to bridge the wireless connection? It is currently running Fedora Workstation 41, and I think 6.12.5 kernel right now (I need to verify that).
That would be very kind of you. If you could test both Bluetooth and the Wi-Fi bridge, that would be great. The combination of ThinkPad and Fedora has usually worked really well, and I’d really like to get these issues resolved.
I dug out my T480 and everything was setup fairly recently, so I did some testing. With host kernel 6.13.7 (that what it was at) and virtualbox 7.1.6, bluetooth worked fine (connected a bluetooth mouse) and used it during testing. Bridge mode on wireless did not work. The guest was a debian instance and the guest NIC comes up but will not get an IP from the DHCP server. If I manually set an IP address network traffic will not traverse the bridge.
The wireless card on my T480 shows up as an Intel 8265 / 8275 at 03:00.0 via lspci.
I can test bluetooth on 6.14 tomorrow as I will be using the T480 to test 41 → 42 update process tomorrow afternoon. Once that is done it will have 6.14 and I can test bluetooth on that as well.
any chance you have docker installed on the host?
there was an incompatibility with docker and nftables/iptables, don’t remember the details but it resulted exactly in your scenario
Thank you so much, that would be great!
Thanks a lot for taking the time to test. I’m using the same wireless chipset, which makes it even more puzzling that the setup works on my end with kernel 6.13. If I didn’t rely on the Wi-Fi bridge functionality for my workflow, I’d probably abandon the setup altogether and switch to using a secondary laptop running Windows 11. It’s proving to be a real hassle.
Thanks for the new approach, but no, I haven’t installed Docker.
I abandoned relying on bridge mode for wireless NIC’s long ago as my experience is that they may work, and may not. The vboxnetflt module is the network shim that makes it happen, and it relies on the kernel hooks. I ended up getting a USB wireless NIC that I connect to the VM in virtualbox and use to connect to a wireless network.
From virtualbox:
"Bridging to a wireless interface is done differently from bridging to a wired interface, because most wireless adapters do not support promiscuous mode. All traffic has to use the MAC address of the host’s wireless adapter, and therefore Oracle VM VirtualBox needs to replace the source MAC address in the Ethernet header of an outgoing packet to make sure the reply will be sent to the host interface. When Oracle VM VirtualBox sees an incoming packet with a destination IP address that belongs to one of the virtual machine adapters it replaces the destination MAC address in the Ethernet header with the VM adapter’s MAC address and passes it on. Oracle VM VirtualBox examines ARP and DHCP packets in order to learn the IP addresses of virtual machines. "
… and a good explanation why the above usually does not work…
https://superuser.com/questions/1847193/why-can-ethernet-nics-bridge-to-virtualbox-and-most-wi-fi-nics-dont
I’ll test the bluetooth part tomorrow when I get my T480 updated to Fedora 42.
I have continued testing and was able to make some progress regarding the Bluetooth issue. Through the KDE Plasma interface, I am unable to establish a connection with the MX Master 3 mouse, although connecting to a Bluetooth speaker works as expected. When I connect the mouse using the console utility bluetoothctl, the connection succeeds. However, the connection is lost and not remembered after a system reboot or when restarting the bluetooth.service.
You are correct, after updating my T480 to Fedora 42 (I am testing and it is not released yet) my bluetooth mouse no longer connects properly. It was connected under Fedora 41. Not sure if this is a kernel (6.14.0), firmware (0.1 build 19 week 44 2021), or supporting software (bluez or bluetoothctl) that is causing the issue. I can initially connect, but then drops and will not re-connect. I might look into this further and see if I can toubleshoot a bit to report it. I really don’t use any bluetooth devices, so I would never have noticed normally.
Sounds like the behavior is much like you are seeing.
Yes, that matches exactly what I’m experiencing. Bluetooth was working reliably with kernel 6.13.9, but starting with 6.14.0, the connection issues began. I’m currently running 6.14.1-300. From what I can tell, there were several changes introduced in the 6.14 kernel series related to Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), possibly affecting connection handling