Topic: PHPVirtualbox

[felixb101]

Hello,

I got PHPVirtualbox loaded fine, runs like a charm in bridge mode on the internal interface.
However, when I try to switch it to the external interface, using a linux guest OS, I can't seem to connect to the network.
I am trying to use a virtual network with a second fixed IP address (the first IP address is for the external network).
My understanding of bridged networks is limited, so I tried to use the eth0, eth1, br0, tap0 but no go.
If someone could point me to a virtual networking troubleshooting on sme howto that would be awesome.

Hoping someone has experience about it to share, it would be appreciated. If someone is available as a consultant let me know your cost estimate to get it up.

Thanks
Felix 

[stephdl]

have you done this ?

BridgeInterface

smeserver-bridge-interface is a small package allowing you to bridge your Internal Interface with one or more virtual tap interfaces. It's main goal is to be used with the new OpenVPN-Bridge contrib, but it has been split in another contrib as it can be used in other situations (if you want to run a virtual machine on your SME Server with virtualbox for example).

see BridgeInterface

Therefore your Guest O.S will have a real ip on your local network, you need to set its virtual NIC on bridged adapter (br0) in phpvirtualbox network settings

after that in your guest os you have to set the same network settings that your other computers (same local network, same gateway...)

I suppose that your guest os can not ping google or any other host.

[felixb101]

I got the VMs to run fine on the private network, that's great by the way with phpvirtualbox to manage via a web page.

What I'm trying to do is run Zimbra mail server in a VM (I got that working fine also). However my users are remote and need to access the Zimbra web client via VPN which is excruciatingly slow. I was thinking about exposing the Zimbra directly to the internet via a public IP (bypass SME-SERVER entirely). Problem is when I assign a static IP to the VM connected to the bridge adapter (br0) connected to (eth1, the public interface) it crashes SME completely. These are my adapters in the configuration that works (bridged to the internal network):

br0       Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:23:54:97:14:B1
          inet addr:192.168.10.26  Bcast:192.168.10.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3413 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:229242 (223.8 KiB)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:23:54:97:14:B1
          UP BROADCAST PROMISC MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:225

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:23:54:97:19:38
          inet addr:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX  Bcast:XXX.XX.XX.XXX  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:796814 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:88842 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:82768121 (78.9 MiB)  TX bytes:103848350 (99.0 MiB)
          Interrupt:177

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:67606 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:67606 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:35547597 (33.9 MiB)  TX bytes:35547597 (33.9 MiB)

tap0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr AA:6F:4A:BE:CC:D5
          UP BROADCAST PROMISC MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
 
Is there an issue with running the public interface in promiscuous mode? Are there security issues with this scenario?
Please advise kindly.

[stephdl]

what is the ip you want to use wich crash the server, i guess it is completely different from 192.168.10.xx

i suggest you take time to describe your network exactly else we can not understand what you are trying (router, switch, different ip)

[felixb101]

Existing:
Internet - Fiber-optic (Distributel) - Router -  Sme <    external_IP
                                                                                internal IP  - VMs on the virtual interface bond to private network


Goal:
Internet - Fiber-optic (Distributel) - Router -  Sme <    external_IP - VMs on the virtual interface bond to public network
                                                                                internal IP 


I'm simply trying to connect the bridge interface to the external world, bypassing SME.
Is it possible? Is there a better way to do this?

[stephdl]

i'm not an expert in networking, someone can have a better solution than mine.

in a first attempt you can use the forwarding of port to forward port to the local ip of your guest.
eg all which is coming on an external ip on port 80 are forwarded to the local ip of your guest on port 80.

you can alternatively see this i think it may be close that you want to do.
http://wiki.contribs.org/Virtual_SME_Server#Proxmox

now i believe if you give the same external ip to the sme and for your guest, you can have some noise.

[felixb101]

The Proxmox solution is exactly what I want to do.
In the wiki, SME is virtualized as opposed to be Dom0, which is not a problem.
I will try to move my SME installation inside a VM.

I guess any Dom0 OS is good, I kind of like Debian best. So my Dom0 - Debian, VM-1 will be SME and VM-2 will be Zimbra (Also debian based).

I get the feeling to get closer to the ideal solution, thank you guys, awesome community.

Kind Regards to all