Virtualbox Bridged Adapter With Ubuntu/Debian Host (AKA Guest OS On Same LAN As Host)

By default, Virtualbox uses NAT to provide network support for guest operating systems. This is fine if you just want to have basic network functionality such as internet access, but it means that the guest will be on its own network. Often having the guest machine on the same LAN as the host is desirable (if you want to connect to the guest via SSH for example).

This is actually very simple to set up. Just open a terminal on the host and install the necessary packages:

1
sudo apt-get install bridge-utils uml-utilities

Next open Virtualbox, select your guest and click Settings. Change ‘Attached to’ from NAT to Bridged Adapter, and click OK.

If you are using DHCP, that’s it. If you are using a static IP, you will need to configure the guest OS accordingly so that it can join your LAN.

4 comments

  • Brian Johnson

    Doesn’t work for me! I seem to be getting a strange network icon blinking and a popup every now and again to tell me that I’m disconnected, thanks for that Ubuntu. :/

  • Pokermu

    Both my host and guest OSs were Ubuntu. It worked well for me. If you use DHCP, you need to run dhclient command to get up from your DHCP server.

  • Simon Smith

    Thants … Finally got Virtualbox network working … Using Zoren 12.04 …

  • Rahul Patil

    Hello Karl, Good Article. Can you please specify how we can configure our debian OS as guest on xp host machine by bridge network. I am not able to configure the system by bridge network.

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